50 Fun Facts About Namibia

What is the capital and largest city of Namibia?

It sits about 1,700 m up on the Khomas Highland in the centre of the country.

Namibia is named after which desert?

The Khoi word means 'vast place'; the country was named by Mburumba Kerina.

The Namib is often described as what?

It has been arid for roughly 55 to 80 million years, rivalled only by the Atacama.

Namibia is the driest country in which region?

Average rainfall is about 350 mm a year, dropping to almost nothing on the Skeleton Coast.

Which ocean lies to the west of Namibia?

The cold Benguela Current offshore creates the fog that keeps the desert alive.

What is the narrow panhandle in Namibia's northeast that reaches toward Zambia and Zimbabwe called?

It gets the country's highest rainfall and saw a secessionist attempt in 1999.

Namibia sits between the Namib and which other desert?

The Kalahari extends into the neighbours to the south and east.

What is the highest point in Namibia, at 2,573 m?

It lies on the Central Plateau, on the Brandberg massif.

Sossusvlei's tallest dune, nicknamed Big Daddy, rises to roughly what height?

The name Sossusvlei roughly means 'dead-end marsh'.

The Etosha salt pan covers about what share of Etosha National Park?

The park was proclaimed a game reserve by the German governor in 1907.

Which endangered animal is among the threatened species protected in Etosha?

Hundreds of species of mammals, birds and reptiles live in the park.

The Fish River gorge holds which distinction?

It runs about 160 km, up to 27 km wide and nearly 550 m deep.

The Skeleton Coast takes its name from what?

Today the shore is also littered with hundreds of shipwrecks.

The San called the Skeleton Coast 'The Land God Made in Anger'; what did Portuguese sailors call it?

Dense fogs from the Benguela current shroud it for much of the year.

The welwitschia plant of the Namib is remarkable for having how many leaves?

They keep growing for the plant's whole life, and the oldest specimens may be 2,000 years old.

The oldest welwitschias are thought to be roughly how old?

Its Afrikaans name means 'two leaves, can't die'.

Which European empire colonised Namibia in 1884?

The colony lasted until a 1915 defeat by South African forces.

The German campaign against the Herero and Nama in 1904-08 is often called what?

About 65,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama were killed.

Which German commander issued the notorious extermination order against the Herero in October 1904?

He issued a second order against the Nama in April 1905.

Berlin formally acknowledged the genocide and agreed to pay compensation in which year?

A minister had apologised in 2004, but the official acknowledgement came 17 years later.

Which country administered Namibia under a League of Nations mandate from 1920?

It later imposed apartheid on the territory and refused to hand it to the UN.

What was Namibia called before independence?

The UN General Assembly voted to rename it Namibia in 1968.

Which movement did the UN recognise in 1973 as the official representative of Namibians?

Its armed wing became the People's Liberation Army of Namibia.

On what date did Namibia become independent?

Nelson Mandela, freed a month earlier, attended the ceremony.

Who was sworn in as Namibia's first president?

Representatives of 147 countries attended the ceremony.

Which port remained under South African control until 1994, four years after independence?

Britain's Cape Colony had annexed it, with the Penguin Islands, back in 1878.

Who won Namibia's 2024 presidential election as SWAPO's first female candidate?

She took 57 percent of the vote.

Which president of Namibia died in office in February 2024?

Vice-president Nangolo Mbumba finished his term.

What is Namibia's sole official language?

Only about 2.3 percent of the population speaks it at home; German and Afrikaans lost official status in 1990.

Which language is spoken in almost half of Namibian households?

It is the language of the largest ethnic group.

Which Christian denomination is the largest in Namibia?

It is a legacy of German and Finnish missionaries.

Missionaries from which Nordic country began spreading Lutheranism in northern Namibia in 1870?

Some of them settled permanently in Namibia.

How many regions is Namibia divided into?

They are subdivided into 121 constituencies.

Namibia is a leading producer of gem-quality diamonds and which nuclear fuel?

It was once the world's fourth-largest uranium producer.

What appears in the blue triangle of Namibia's flag?

The flag was adopted on independence day in 1990.

Sprinter Frankie Fredericks won how many Olympic silver medals for Namibia?

He was runner-up in both the 100 m and 200 m in 1992 and 1996.

Namibia's most successful national team plays which sport?

It has competed in the last seven World Cups.

Twyfelfontein, a UNESCO site since 2007, is famous for what?

It holds one of the largest concentrations of petroglyphs in Africa.

The capital was refounded in 1890 by which German officer?

He settled near the hot springs in what is now a suburb of the capital.

Which two Namibian regions are the most urbanised and economically active?

Khomas holds the capital, Erongo the main coastal towns.

Which epidemic wiped out an estimated 95 percent of cattle in southern and central Namibia in 1897?

The disaster helped fuel unrest ahead of the 1904 uprising.

The Etosha reserve was proclaimed in 1907 by the governor of which colony?

Friedrich von Lindequist signed Ordinance 88.

Which Bantu group formed kingdoms such as Ondonga and Oukwanyama from around 1600?

They remain the largest ethnic group today.

Namibia's Gini coefficient of 59 in 2015 marks it as having what?

About 41 percent of the population is affected by multidimensional poverty.

Which line of latitude cuts Namibia roughly in half?

Sitting at the southern edge of the tropics under a high-pressure belt, the country enjoys more than 300 days of sunshine a year.

Which cold, north-flowing Atlantic flow dominates the climate of Namibia's coast?

It brings dense fog, lower temperatures and 50 mm or less of rain a year to the coastal strip.

Which is the only sovereign country with a lower population density than Namibia?

Namibia averaged 3.08 people per square kilometre in 2017 and has the lowest density of any sovereign state with a coastline.

What is the name of the large aquifer discovered in 2012 straddling the Angola-Namibia border?

Over 100,000 boreholes have been drilled in Namibia in the past century, a third of them dry.

Before 1990, which three languages were official in Namibia?

SWAPO had long favoured making the country officially monolingual, and English became the sole official language at independence.

Roughly how many days of sunshine does Namibia receive each year?

Frequent clear skies come from the sub-tropical high-pressure belt; the winter months of June to August are generally dry.