South West Africa/ Namibia

Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in southern Africa on the Atlantic coast. It shares borders with Angola, and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east, and South Africa to the south. more...

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It gained independence from South Africa in 1990 and its capital city is Windhoek. Namibia is a member state of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the African Union (AU), and the Commonwealth of Nations.

History

The dry lands of Namibia were inhabited since early times by Bushmen, Damara, Namaqua, and since about the fourteenth century AD, by immigrating Bantu who came with the Bantu expansion. The region was not extensively explored by Europeans until the 19th century, when the land came under German control as South-West Africa -- apart from Walvis Bay under British control. South Africa occupied the colony during World War I and administered it as a League of Nations mandate territory until after World War II, when it unilaterally annexed the territory, albeit without international recognition.

In 1966 the Marxist South-West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO) guerrilla group launched a war of independence, but it was not until 1988 that South Africa agreed to end its administration of Namibia, in accordance with a United Nations peace plan for the entire region. Independence came in 1990, and Walvis Bay was ceded to Namibia in 1994.

Administrative divisions

Namibia is divided into thirteen regions and subdivided into 102 constituencies.

Geography

At 318,674 mi² (825,418 km²), Namibia is the world's thirty-fourth largest country (after Venezuela). It is comparable in size to Pakistan, and is about half the size of the US state of Alaska. After Mongolia, Namibia is the least densely populated country in the world (1.5 persons per km²).

The Namibian landscape consists primarily of central highlands, of which the highest point is the Brandberg at 2,606 metres (8,550 ft). The central plateau runs from north to south, bordered by the Namib Desert and its coastal plains to the west, the Orange River to the south, and the Kalahari Desert to the east.

A remarkable strip of land in the northeast, known as the Caprivi Strip is the vestige of a narrow corridor demarcated for the German Empire to access the Zambezi River.

The Namibian climate ranges from desert to subtropical, and is generally hot and dry; precipitation is sparse and erratic. The cold, north-flowing Benguela current accounts for some of the low precipitation. Besides the capital city Windhoek in the centre of the country, other important towns are the ports of Walvis Bay and Swakopmund, as well as Oshakati, Grootfontein, Tsumeb and Keetmanshoop.

Read more at Wikipedia.org