Namibia

Overview

Namibia occupies 825,615 square kilometres of southwest Africa between the Namib and Kalahari deserts — the driest country in sub-Saharan Africa — with only about 3 million people, one of the world's lowest population densities; its capital is Windhoek. The land was inhabited for millennia by Khoi, San, Damara and Nama peoples, with Bantu groups such as the Owambo, who formed kingdoms like Ondonga and Oukwanyama, arriving from around the 14th century. Portuguese navigators passed the coast in the 1480s, but the arid shore long deterred colonisation.

History

Germany annexed the territory in 1884 as German South West Africa. When the Herero and Nama rose against settler land seizures in 1904, German forces waged a campaign of extermination now recognised as the first genocide of the 20th century, killing roughly 80% of the Herero and half the Nama; Germany formally acknowledged the genocide in 2021, pledging €1.1 billion in aid. South African troops seized the colony in 1915, and from 1920 South Africa administered it as a League of Nations mandate it treated as annexation, extending apartheid after 1948.

The United Nations revoked the mandate in 1966, renamed the territory Namibia in 1968 and in 1973 recognised SWAPO as the Namibian people's representative; SWAPO's armed wing, PLAN, fought a long insurgency that merged into the South African Border War, a Cold War proxy conflict intertwined with Angola's civil war. The 1988 Tripartite Accord linked Cuban withdrawal from Angola to Namibian independence. Under UN supervision (UNTAG), elections in November 1989 gave SWAPO 57% of the vote, a constitution was adopted in February 1990, and Namibia became independent on 21 March 1990 with Sam Nujoma as its first president; South Africa ceded Walvis Bay in 1994.

Later history and present status

Namibia has since been a stable multiparty democracy, though SWAPO has won every election — Nujoma handed over smoothly to Hifikepunye Pohamba in 2005, Hage Geingob followed (dying in office in February 2024), and Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah won the 2024 election to become the country's first female president in March 2025. A secessionist rising in the Caprivi Strip was quashed in 1999. The economy rests on mining (diamonds, uranium, gold), agriculture and tourism, with striking inequality (Gini about 59) and widespread informal housing. English is the sole official language; the population is 93% indigenous African, and nearly 88% Christian, with Lutheranism the largest denomination.