Namibia Safaris, Tours & Holidays

One of Africa’s newest countries, Namibia gained its independence from South Africa as late as 1990. Formerly known as South-West Africa, the country experienced a peaceful transition from years of foreign rule, first by Germany, then – after World War I – by South Africa. Today Namibia is a constitutional democracy with an entrenched Bill of Rights that provides for freedom of speech, press, assembly, association and religion. This is particularly important given the country’s diverse population, which includes the dominant Ovambo – who traditionally live in the fertile north – as well as the Damara, Herero, Himba and Bushmen people, and a considerable number of white Namibians.

Despite this diversity, Namibia’s population is tiny – only a little over two million people in a country that is larger than the UK and Germany combined, or twice the size of California. The reason is water – or lack of it. With permanent rivers only on its northern and southern boundaries, Namibia is exceedingly arid. For the most part, rain puts in a regular appearance only in the country’s more northerly regions, around December to March; further south and along the Namib coast, rain is increasingly rare, and may not fall from one year to the next. Temperatures, although similarly extreme in the desert, are more temperate elsewhere, with daytime averages around 25–35°C in the rainy season, cooling to 15–25°C in the winter months – and sometimes plummeting below zero at night Namibia’s landscape is dominated by a central plateau, which is home to rolling hills and rich farmland. To the west, the land falls off in a dramatic escarpment down to the Namib Desert, which runs for 1,600km alongside the Atlantic Ocean and is best known for the spectacular apricot-coloured dunes of Sossusvlei. To the east, the plateau slopes off more gradually, merging into the great sand sheet of the Kalahari Desert.