The Swakopmund jetty was one of only two entry points to the colony of German South West Africa (GSWA) located on the Atlantic coast. It was first built as a silted-up mole at the turn of the century and then as a provisional wooden jetty during the colonial war of 1904–1908. This article focuses on the post-war building of the iron jetty in Swakopmund that was constructed in a private enterprise from 1911 into the First World War. It draws on new material from the construction site bureau and sheds light on the diversity of the labourers who worked on the jetty. It focuses on the recruitment, wages, working conditions and control of labour on the construction site by tracing the networks between the metropolis and the colony of GSWA, its engineers, foremen and craftsmen, as well as African labour migration such as Cape, Ovambo and Herero workers and local day labourers. With the focus on sources held in corporate archives, it claims to take the challenges to business in this new colonial context into account, revealing especially the limitations of recruitment and the agency of Ovambo and Cape workers in a labour market in transition after the colonial war.