Sub-Saharan Africa’s driest country mines diamonds sparsely
Namibia, Southern Africa’s Atlantic republic, borders Angola, Zambia via the Caprivi Strip, Botswana, and South Africa, with Zimbabwe less than 200 metres away near Kazungula. The driest country in sub-Saharan Africa, it holds only about 3.1 million people, making it one of the most thinly populated nations anywhere.
Windhoek is the capital and largest city. The name comes from the Namib, the world’s oldest desert, whose Khoi name means vast place; Mburumba Kerina chose it, first suggesting Republic of Namib. Diamonds, uranium, gold and silver join farming and tourism as economic pillars, but 41 percent of people face multidimensional poverty and a 2015 Gini score of 59 ranks among the planet’s most unequal.
San hunter-gatherers and Khoikhoi herders, with the Damara and Nama, lived here long before Bantu migrants came around the 14th century; Owambo kingdoms such as Ondonga formed from 1600. Diogo Cão landed in 1485 and Bartolomeu Dias in 1486, though Portugal made no claim. Oorlam groups from the Cape crossed the Orange River in the late 18th century, Finnish Lutheran missionaries reached the north in 1870, and the Nama–Herero War erupted in 1880. The Cape annexed Walvis Bay and the Penguin Islands in 1878.
Bismarck declared German South West Africa in 1884. Rinderpest killed about 95 percent of cattle in the south and centre in 1897, prompting the Red Line veterinary fence. When the Herero and Nama rose in 1904, German forces killed some 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama in what is called the century’s first genocide; Berlin formally acknowledged it only in 2021, pledging €1.1 billion over 30 years.
Louis Botha’s South African troops ended German rule in 1915, and a League of Nations mandate followed in 1920. Apartheid arrived after 1948, confining Black residents outside the southern Police Zone. SWAPO launched armed struggle in 1966, the UN renamed the territory Namibia on 12 June 1968, and contract workers struck in 1971. Independence came in March 1990, though Walvis Bay stayed South African until 1994.
Source: Namibia
