diff --git a/ckan/pastertemplates/template/setup.py_tmpl b/ckan/pastertemplates/template/setup.py_tmpl
index 1195ee5dde8..921035fefd2 100644
--- a/ckan/pastertemplates/template/setup.py_tmpl
+++ b/ckan/pastertemplates/template/setup.py_tmpl
@@ -54,6 +54,7 @@ setup(
     # You can just specify the packages manually here if your project is
     # simple. Or you can use find_packages().
     packages=find_packages(exclude=['contrib', 'docs', 'tests*']),
+    namespace_packages=['ckanext'],
 
     # List run-time dependencies here.  These will be installed by pip when your
     # project is installed. For an analysis of "install_requires" vs pip's