48 Fun Facts About Namibia

What is the capital and largest city of Namibia?

Windhoek is Namibia's capital and by far its largest city; short of water in arid country, it pioneered recycling treated sewage directly back into the drinking supply.

Which river forms Namibia's southern border?

The Orange forms Namibia's southern border, and its name has nothing to do with colour: the Dutch officer Robert Gordon, exploring the river, named it in honour of the House of Orange, the Dutch ruling family.

The Namib is often described as what?

The oldest desert in the world is the Namib's usual billing, arid for at least 55 million years; its beetles have adapted by doing headstands on dune crests so that coastal fog condenses on them and runs down to their mouths.

Which Namibian people are known for coating skin and hair with red ochre paste?

The Himba mix red ochre with butterfat into a paste called otjize and wear it daily on skin and braided hair; laboratory tests have found that the ochre works as a sunscreen, useful for cattle herders in the arid northwest.

Which ocean lies to the west of Namibia?

The Atlantic brought the Portuguese navigator Diogo Cão to this coast in 1486, and he marked his landfall with a stone cross; a German naval commander carried it off in 1893, and Germany agreed in 2019 to give it back.

Which part of northeast Namibia did Germany acquire in 1890 to gain access to the Zambezi River?

The Caprivi Strip was meant to give Germany's colony a river route to the east coast, and it failed at once: Victoria Falls, about 65 km downstream, makes the Zambezi impassable to shipping.

Namibia sits between the Namib and which other desert?

The Kalahari fills Namibia's east, yet much of it is no true desert: its northeast gets too much rain to qualify, but the deep sand drains the water away at once, so there is grazing after rain and almost no surface water.

Which mountain, Namibia's highest, shelters the famous 'White Lady' painting?

The Brandberg, whose summit Königstein is the country's highest point, hid the painting until a German surveyor stumbled on it; the French priest Henri Breuil's 1955 book then made it one of the best-known prehistoric paintings anywhere.

Which dune, the tallest at Sossusvlei, towers over the dead trees of Deadvlei?

Big Daddy rises about 325 metres above Deadvlei, a white clay pan where camel thorn trees died centuries ago after dunes cut off their river; the air is so dry that the blackened trunks have never rotted.

Which critically endangered animal do visitors watch drinking after dark at Etosha's floodlit Okaukuejo waterhole?

Black rhinoceros numbers crashed to about 2,400 by the mid-1990s under rampant poaching; by 2018 protection in guarded parks and reserves had more than doubled them.

Which canyon in southern Namibia is usually billed as the largest in Africa?

Fish River Canyon was cut by a river that now barely flows: the Fish runs only after summer rains and then shrinks to a chain of pools, while hot springs rise along the canyon's faults at Ai-Ais.

Which fog-bound stretch of Namibia's desert shore is littered with the hulls of hundreds of wrecked ships?

The Skeleton Coast owes its wrecks to its weather: cool offshore currents meeting hot desert air wrap the reefs and shoals in dense fog, and crews who got ashore faced waterless desert.

Which 2015 action film moved its desert shoot to the Namib after freak rains turned its planned location into a flower garden?

Mad Max: Fury Road was due to film at Broken Hill in the Australian outback until record rain carpeted the red earth in wildflowers; George Miller waited a year, then shipped the production to Namibia.

Which Namib plant grows only two leaves in its whole life?

Welwitschia keeps one pair of leaves for life, growing them from the base while sand and wind wear away the tips; in old plants they split into so many ribbons that the two look like a tangled heap.

Kolmanskop, the Namib ghost town now knee-deep in drifting sand, was built on a rush for what?

Diamonds turned up here in 1908, when railway worker Zacharias Lewala picked one up beside the line; the boomtown gained a casino and an ice factory, then emptied once richer fields were found far to the south.

Which Namibian town is named after the German trader whose 1883 land purchase began the colony?

Lüderitz was renamed for a man who vanished: three years after buying the bay, Adolf Lüderitz set out by boat on a prospecting expedition and never came back, so the bay took his name.

Which Namibian island held a German concentration camp for Herero and Nama prisoners from 1905?

Shark Island held prisoners who were forced to build the nearby harbour and railway in cold, wet conditions; by most estimates the majority of those sent there died before the camp closed in 1907.

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

Lothar von Trotha ordered that every Herero found inside German territory be shot; the Kaiser withdrew the order about two months later under pressure from his chancellor, and survivors were confined in forced-labour camps.

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

South Africa imposed its own apartheid system on the territory, so in 1966 the UN declared the mandate terminated; South African rule nevertheless carried on for more than two decades.

What was Namibia called before independence?

South West Africa was the name from German colonial times; the UN General Assembly renamed the territory Namibia in 1968, more than twenty years before independence made the new name a fact on the ground.

Which liberation movement did the UN General Assembly recognise as the sole representative of Namibia's people?

SWAPO took up arms in 1966, fought for more than two decades, and then won the UN-supervised election of 1989 that led to independence.

Namibia's independence in 1990 came the month after which world event?

Nelson Mandela's release from prison came in February 1990, and in March he was a guest of honour at the independence ceremony, watching the new president sworn in.

Who was sworn in as Namibia's first president?

Sam Nujoma came home in 1989 after nearly thirty years in exile, led his movement to victory in the UN-supervised election, and was sworn in on independence day in 1990.

Which town stayed a foreign enclave when Namibia became independent and was handed over only in 1994?

Walvis Bay was annexed by Britain in 1878, six years before Germany claimed the land around it, so the harbour never belonged to the German colony and stayed outside the new state until 1994.

Who won Namibia's 2024 election to become the country's first female president?

Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah joined the liberation movement as a young teenager and spent more than a decade in exile; ballot shortages stretched the 2024 vote over extra days before she was declared the winner.

Which president of Namibia died in office in February 2024?

Hage Geingob chaired the assembly that wrote the constitution and then spent twelve years as prime minister; he died in February 2024, weeks after announcing a cancer diagnosis.

What is Namibia's sole official language?

English became the sole official language at independence, although only about 3 in 100 Namibians speak it at home; Afrikaans and German, both official until then, lost that status.

Which language of the far north is the most widely spoken in Namibian homes?

Oshiwambo is a cluster of related dialects, with Kwanyama and Ndonga as its written standards, and it leads because the far north is the most densely settled part of the country.

Which Christian denomination is the largest in Namibia?

Lutheran leaders took a public stand in 1971, when two of them signed an open letter of protest to the prime minister of the ruling power.

Missionaries from which Nordic country began work in northern Namibia in 1870?

The Finnish Missionary Society sent its first missionaries from Finland to Ovamboland in northern Namibia in 1870, founding the churches and schools that shaped the far north for a century.

Which wild cat does a Namibian conservation centre protect by placing guard dogs with livestock farmers?

Cheetah losses came largely from farmers trapping or shooting the cats to protect goats and sheep, so since 1994 a centre has bred Anatolian shepherd dogs to bark predators away; farmers with a dog kill fewer cats.

Namibia's Rössing mine, a vast open pit worked in the Namib since 1976, produces which metal?

Uranium was found in the Namib in 1928, yet the low-grade ore went unmined for nearly fifty years, until Rössing began mining it in 1976.

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

A twelve-rayed yellow sun stands for life and energy; the flag emerged from a contest that drew more than 800 entries and was adopted seven weeks before independence, then first raised on the day itself.

Which Namibian sprinter won four Olympic silvers in the 1990s?

Frankie Fredericks was a goal-scoring footballer for a top club before a track scholarship took him to an American university; his 1992 silvers, at the country's first Olympics, were its first medals.

In which sport did Namibia first play at a World Cup, in 1999?

Rugby union has taken Namibia to seven World Cups in a row, from 1999 to 2023, without a single win; its 142-0 loss to Australia in 2003 is the tournament's record margin.

Twyfelfontein, a World Heritage Site in Namibia's arid northwest, is known for more than 2,000 of what?

Rock engravings cover the slopes because a rare desert spring drew hunter-gatherers here for ritual over at least 2,000 years; giraffes and rhinos are the favourite subjects, cut into the stone with harder rocks.

Which feral animals, thought to descend from stock scattered in the First World War, roam the Namib Desert near Aus?

Horses have run wild here for about a century on a man-made waterhole; nobody is sure of their origin, though one theory blames a 1915 air raid that scattered the mounts of an army camp.

Which Hollywood couple flew to Namibia in 2006 for the birth of their daughter?

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt got a whole government on their side: reporters were refused visas unless they held the couple's written permission, and photographers who tried anyway were arrested or told to leave.

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

The 1897 rinderpest epidemic killed an estimated 95 percent of cattle in central and southern Namibia, ruining Herero herders and fuelling the unrest that led to the 1904 uprising.

What is Hoba, a 60-tonne mass found on a Namibian farm in 1920 and never moved?

Meteorite, and the largest ever found in one piece: Hoba is thought to have come in slowly enough to land intact, which is why 60 tonnes of iron sit where they fell with no crater around them.

Nama, a Namibian language, uses extra letters such as ǂ and ǁ to write which sounds?

Clicks work as ordinary consonants in Nama and the San languages, and they have travelled: Zulu and Xhosa, unrelated Bantu tongues, borrowed theirs through long contact with click-speaking neighbours.

In 2015 figures, Namibia ranked among the world's most extreme countries for the gap between what?

Rich and poor sit further apart here than almost anywhere: the 2015 income-gap score of 59 was one of the world's highest, a legacy of colonial and apartheid rule that still shapes who owns land and who earns.

Which line of latitude cuts Namibia roughly in half?

The Tropic of Capricorn is the most southerly line where the sun can stand directly overhead, which happens around 21 December, so northern Namibia lies inside the tropics and the south just outside them.

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

Benguela water chills the sea air into fog instead of rain, so the shore is wrapped in thick fog on more than 180 days a year yet is almost rainless, and desert plants and animals live off the mist.

Which Namibian town, founded in 1892 as the German colony's main harbour, is now a seaside holiday resort?

Swakopmund had no shelter for ships and a dangerous surf, but the only natural harbour nearby was already in British hands, so Germany built its port here anyway; today it lives on holidaymakers instead.

What name is given to the mysterious bare round patches that dot the grassland along the Namib Desert's edge?

Fairy circles have resisted explanation for decades: one camp blames termites working under the soil, another says the grasses space themselves out in the fight for scarce water.

A Namibian bush farmer became an unlikely film star in which comedy about a Coke bottle that falls from the sky?

The Gods Must Be Crazy became a worldwide hit, yet its star Nǃxau had so little use for paper money that he is said to have let his first wages, $300, blow away in the wind.

Which large animals survive in Namibia's northwestern desert by trekking some 70 km between dry riverbeds in a single night?

Elephants here are one of only two desert-dwelling populations on Earth, the other being in Mali; they can go up to three days without drinking, and long marches over sand have splayed their feet unusually wide.