Robert Shimooshili did not build Namibia’s historic Africa Cup of Nations run. He arrived in time to collect it. Elected Namibia Football Association president in November 2023, he took office weeks before AFCON 2023 kicked off in Côte d’Ivoire in January 2024. The Brave Warriors had already qualified. The work belonged to the period before him. The cheques belonged to the administration that followed.
CAF paid Namibia about N$15 million (US$800,000) for reaching the last 16. That was only the most visible transfer. Like every FIFA member association, the NFA also receives FIFA Forward grants and recurring CAF subventions meant for infrastructure, competitions, regional offices and the pipeline that produces the next national team.
FIFA’s own Namibia ledger shows about US$4.02 million (roughly N$64 million) in committed Forward funds. Under Forward 3.0 the cycle can reach US$8 million (about N$128 million) per association. An NFA audit recorded FIFA income of about N$49 million in one reporting period and expected a further FIFA injection of about N$64 million between 2024 and 2026. The money arrived. The football did not.
FIFA’s published split is the indictment. “Other projects” take US$1.92 million (about N$30.7 million), or 47.8 percent. National-team support takes US$1.04 million (about N$16.6 million). Infrastructure takes only US$838,479 (about N$13.4 million). Competitions take US$219,545 (about N$3.5 million). Capacity building – coaches, referees, administrators, the people who make a federation function – is recorded at US$0.
The infrastructure line is thinner still: one headquarters, one technical centre, one pitch, zero stadiums, zero futsal or beach-soccer complexes.
That is why Namibia’s senior team has played “home” World Cup qualifiers in Botswana. Domestic grounds have not met CAF and FIFA standards. In April 2026 the NFA said it had secured more than ten pieces of land for its own stadiums and still had no money to build them.
The one capital project it keeps advertising, a technical-centre upgrade worth more than US$4 million (about N$64 million), is blocked because the City of Windhoek will not donate or extend the lease on the Katutura land. FIFA will not release the grant without title or a long-term lease.
Shimooshili still lists that same centre, plus regional offices, women’s football, futsal and basic league costs, when he asks for more FIFA money. Those items are exactly what Forward and CAF subventions were supposed to fund.
The first public argument after AFCON was not how to convert the windfall into grounds and offices. It was who would touch the prize money. Players demanded a larger share. Shimooshili called it reckless to hand over the full pot. The association later said N$4.1 million (about US$256,000) would go to the squad and technical staff. A historic cheque became a quarrel over leftovers.
Then the cash-strapped NFA agreed to rehire former secretary general Franco Cosmos after filing a notice to oppose his High Court appeal and failing to defend the case. The package was widely reported at N$4.7 million (about US$294,000), including a lump sum and a N$70,000 (about US$4,400) monthly salary.
Shimooshili had previously been a witness in the Labour Court process that upheld Cosmos’s 2022 dismissal. Once he was president, the institution stopped fighting. A body that begs for match-day funding found the money to restore a man it had already dismissed. It also carried tax arrears near N$1.5 million (about US$94,000) and spent more than N$1.1 million (about US$69,000) on two executive funerals.
Integrity followed the same script. When an executive faced dismissal-related questions over theft in an external job, Shimooshili publicly shielded the official. Unless a criminal court had convicted the person, he said, their code of conduct remained intact. Allies first. The sport’s reputation second.
Domestic football paid for the paralysis. Debmarine Namibia threatened to withdraw league sponsorship, citing a total loss of confidence in NFA leadership and demanding that the league be run independently of the association. Players went unpaid for months while operations stalled. Only in mid-2026 did Shimooshili concede independence for 2026/27. That was not reform. It was surrender after the sponsor had already lost patience.
That deplorable record and catalogue of failure explains the allegiance to beleaguered FIFA President Gianni Infantino.
While UEFA, AFC and CONCACAF moved against the FIFA president over the aborted Forward Enterprise scheme, Shimooshili pledged Namibia to FIFA and CAF’s line and treated the promise of larger grants as development Namibia cannot refuse. For an administration sitting on AFCON prize money it did not earn, FIFA Forward allocations weighted toward “other projects,” CAF subventions, a stalled technical centre, zero stadiums, zero capacity-building spend, a multimillion-dollar rehire and a league that had to be pried from its grip, Infantino’s projects are not a development strategy. They are the means of embezzling money remitted in Namibia’s name.
The supply lines of patronage survive if the man at the top of FIFA survives.
Shimooshili has not been personally charged with a crime. He does not need to be. He inherited a qualification, collected N$15 million (US$800,000) plus the regular FIFA and CAF development flows, and has left no stadiums, no unlocked technical centre, no capacity-building programme and no qualification pipeline that justifies the loyalty.
Namibia’s member associations, acting with the Ministry of Sport, should remove him with haste just as Nigerian Football Federation President Ibrahim Gusau was forced to resign this week.
The same standard applies everywhere. Every FA president who has publicly endorsed Infantino’s commercial overreach and the corruption it protects should be removed by their local member associations, in conjunction with their ministries of sport. The grants were never theirs to convert into political insurance. The mandate was to build football. They chose the pipeline instead.
