Namibia
Where the world's oldest desert meets the Atlantic
Namibia is a land of immense, dry spaces and staggering emptiness - the second least densely populated country on earth - where the ancient Namib Desert runs the length of a wild Atlantic coastline famed for shipwrecks and fog. Towering apricot dunes at Sossusvlei, the wildlife-rich saltpan of Etosha, and the canyon country of the south draw travelers to one of Africa's most photogenic landscapes. A former German colony later administered by South Africa, Namibia won independence only in 1990 and has since become a stable, mineral-rich democracy built on diamonds, uranium, and tourism.
Two deserts bracket the country. The Namib, considered the oldest desert in the world, hugs the coast in a belt of dunes and gravel plains, while the Kalahari spreads across the east. Between them runs a central plateau where most people and farms are found, rising to the Brandberg massif whose Konigstein peak, at 2,573 meters, is the highest point. The Fish River Canyon in the south is among the largest canyons on the planet. Permanent rivers flow only along the borders - the Orange to the south, the Kunene and Zambezi to the north - leaving the interior dependent on ephemeral watercourses and boreholes.
San hunter-gatherers and later Bantu and Nama herders inhabited the region long before German colonization in the late nineteenth century, during which the colonial regime carried out the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples. South Africa took control after World War I and imposed apartheid until a long liberation struggle led by SWAPO brought independence in 1990. English is the sole official language, chosen as a neutral tongue above Afrikaans, German, and numerous African languages. Namibia today balances large-scale mining and commercial ranching with community-based conservancies that have helped wildlife recover across communal lands.