Abstract
This paper explores the making of the entrepreneurial self in contemporary Namibia. Rather than locating my ethnography within well-rehearsed arguments on ‘occult economies’ in Africa, I want to explore the relationship between neo-liberal discourses and practices and idioms of play, contingency and fortune. My ethnographic evidence comes from fieldwork conducted among young entrepreneurs living in Windhoek, Namibia's booming capital. Ambitious and enterprising, these youth have transformed their knowledge of IT and the media into an online and televised competition called Taramo Live. The business, with its sleek graphics and catchy tunes, is the latest addition to the appearance and consolidation of raffles, mobile phone competitions and prize draws in Southern Africa. In this paper, I bring to the fore the ways in which youths' processes of entrepreneurial self-making rely on composite biographical narratives that are constantly created, imagined and performed within the context of Namibia's ‘fortunational capitalism’. Here, I will show that what constitutes valued work has been reconceptualized to accommodate emerging discourses on entrepreneurship.
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