Namibia

Namibia has three belts. The Namib runs the whole Atlantic coast, a desert tens of millions of years old kept dry by the cold Benguela current; fog rolling in from the sea is the main source of moisture for its beetles, lizards and lichens. Inland rises the central plateau around Windhoek at 1,600–2,000 m, and to the east the Kalahari's red sands stretch into Botswana.

Sossusvlei's dunes, among the highest in the world, are made of sand carried from the Orange River and blown north over millions of years; iron oxide gives them their red colour, deeper the older the dune. Deadvlei's camelthorn trees died about 600–900 years ago when dunes cut off the river that fed them, and the air is too dry for them to rot.

The coast north of Swakopmund is the Skeleton Coast, named for whale bones and shipwrecks; the Sperrgebiet in the south has been closed since 1908 for diamond mining. Rivers such as the Kuiseb, Swakop and Huab flow only after rains, but their underground water supports trees and the desert-adapted elephants and lions of the north-west.

In the far north-east, the Zambezi region (formerly the Caprivi Strip) is a completely different landscape of rivers, floodplains and forest, reaching the Zambezi and Chobe rivers and borders with Angola, Zambia, Botswana and within a few hundred metres of Zimbabwe.

The San, whose ancestors lived here for tens of thousands of years, left some of the richest rock art in Africa. At Twyfelfontein thousands of engravings of animals, footprints and geometric signs were cut into sandstone; the Brandberg's White Lady painting is among the best known. Many San today live in the Kalahari border areas and in conservancies such as Nyae Nyae.

The Nama, Khoekhoe-speaking herders, lived in the south; Damara people, whose origins are debated, share the Nama language. Bantu-speaking groups arrived over the last several centuries: Herero and Himba cattle herders moved into the centre and north-west, and the Ovambo kingdoms settled the fertile floodplains along the Angolan border, where half of Namibians live today.

In the 19th century, Oorlam groups of mixed Khoekhoe and European descent moved in from the Cape with guns and horses; Jonker Afrikaner founded a settlement at Windhoek in the 1840s. Wars over cattle and grazing between Nama and Herero shaped the decades before colonisation.

The Himba of Kunene, closely related to the Herero, kept cattle-based semi-nomadic life; women's ochre-and-butterfat skin paste and hairstyles are widely photographed. Tourism brings income but also 'show villages'; the better visits are through conservancy-linked guides.

Germany declared a protectorate over the coast at Lüderitz in 1884 and expanded inland as German South West Africa. Settlers took land and cattle; railways, forts and towns such as Windhoek, Swakopmund and Lüderitz were built in German style, which is why their churches and houses still look like a Baltic seaside resort.

In 1904 the Herero rose against land seizures; the Nama followed. General Lothar von Trotha issued an extermination order, and troops drove Herero into the Omaheke desert and sealed the waterholes. Survivors were held in concentration camps, including on Shark Island at Lüderitz, where many died. An estimated 65,000–80,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama died.

Germany formally acknowledged the killings as genocide in 2021 and offered development funding, but Herero and Nama leaders rejected the deal for leaving them out of negotiations; talks continue. Human remains taken to Germany for 'racial science' have been returned in several ceremonies.

Diamonds found near Lüderitz in 1908 created a boom and the town of Kolmanskop, abandoned by the 1950s and now half-buried in sand. German influence persists in language, beer brewed to the purity law, place names and a German-speaking community of around 20,000.

South African troops took the colony in 1915, and the League of Nations gave South Africa a mandate in 1920. Instead of preparing independence, Pretoria extended apartheid: homelands, pass laws and contract labour for Ovambo workers in the mines and on farms.

SWAPO, founded in 1960, began armed struggle in 1966. The war was fought largely from bases in Angola and Zambia and in the north, and became tied to the Angolan civil war, with Cuban troops on one side and South Africa on the other. The 1978 South African attack on a refugee camp at Cassinga in Angola killed hundreds and is remembered each 4 May.

UN Resolution 435 set out the path to independence in 1978, but it was only implemented after the 1988 agreements linking Cuban withdrawal from Angola to South African withdrawal from Namibia. UN-supervised elections followed in 1989, and Namibia became independent on 21 March 1990 with Sam Nujoma as president. Walvis Bay stayed South African until 1994.

Namibia has since held regular elections and kept a free press, with SWAPO dominant throughout. In 2024 Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah won the presidency, taking office in March 2025 as the country's first woman president. Land reform, unemployment and inequality remain the central debates.

Namibia was one of the first countries to write environmental protection into its constitution. From 1996 it let rural communities form conservancies with rights over wildlife and tourism on communal land. There are now over 80, covering about a fifth of the country, and they share income from lodges and regulated hunting.

The results are visible: desert-adapted elephants, black rhinos, lions and cheetahs have recovered in the north-west outside formal parks. Namibia holds one of the largest free-roaming black rhino populations; rangers from the Save the Rhino Trust and community rhino rangers track them, and visitors can join on foot at some lodges.

Etosha, proclaimed in 1907, is built around a 4,800 km² salt pan that fills briefly in good rain years. In the dry season, animals concentrate at springs and boreholes, which makes self-drive viewing easy. Namibia also hosts the Cheetah Conservation Fund near Otjiwarongo, working with farmers who once shot cheetahs.

Conservation faces pressure from drought, human-wildlife conflict with elephants and lions, and debates over trophy hunting and ivory trade. Park fees rose sharply in April 2026 to fund management.

About 3 million Namibians live in a country where Windhoek holds over 400,000 people and the north around Oshakati and Ondangwa is densely farmed, while the south and west are nearly empty. Many families move between a rural homestead and a job in town.

English became the only official language at independence as a neutral choice, though it is few people's mother tongue. Oshiwambo is the most spoken home language; Afrikaans still works as a lingua franca, and German newspapers and radio survive.

Food mixes cattle culture, braai and German baking. Kapana, grilled beef strips sold at Windhoek's Single Quarters market, is the street food; oshifima, millet porridge, is the northern staple; game meat such as oryx and kudu is on every lodge menu; and Swakopmund's cafés serve Black Forest cake and apple strudel. Windhoek Lager has been brewed since 1920.

Most Namibians are Christian, largely Lutheran from Finnish and German missions. Herero commemorations at Okahandja each August, with women in Victorian-style dresses and horn-shaped headdresses, remember leaders and the genocide.