Namibia

Namibian President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, for article on Namibia first female president, for article on female president

Namibia elects Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah as its first female president

By / / Good News For Humankind

Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah has become Namibia’s first female president, winning 57% of the vote in November 2024 — enough to clinch the race in a single round. At 72, she brings a half-century of public life to the role, from her work in the underground liberation movement of the 1970s to her years as foreign minister and, most recently, vice-president. Known as a steady, diplomatic presence largely untouched by the scandals that have shadowed others in her party, she now leads the country she once helped free. Her rise stands out across a region where women heads of state remain rare, and where several liberation-era ruling parties are losing ground — a quiet but meaningful milestone for African democracy.

Participants at the Indigenous Peoples’ and Local Communities’ Conservation Congress, for article on community-led conservation

Namibia hosts Africa’s first community-led conservation congress

By / / Good News For Humankind

Indigenous peoples and local communities took the lead at a major African conservation congress for the first time, with delegates from 43 countries gathering in Windhoek, Namibia to set the agenda themselves. Rather than international NGOs or governments calling the shots, community members chose the topics — from customary land rights to human-wildlife conflict — and shaped the conversation. One organizer put it simply: in many African villages, conservation isn’t a program people are recruited into, it’s already a way of living. As the world works toward protecting 30% of land and oceans by 2030, this shift from being invited to the table to building the table themselves could reshape how conservation actually works on the ground.

image for article on twyfelfontein rock engravings

Wilton culture hunter-gatherers make Twyfelfontein a center of shamanic rock art

By / / Archive of Human Genius

Twyfelfontein’s rock engravings, carved into a desert valley in what is now Namibia, trace back as far as 10,000 B.C.E., when Stone Age hunter-gatherers settled around a hidden spring. Over 2,500 carvings have been documented across 212 sandstone slabs, including animals paired with their tracks. It remains one of Africa’s richest windows into early human imagination.

BushmenSan, for article on San people southern Africa

San people emerge as one of Earth’s oldest surviving cultures in southern Africa

By / / Archive of Human Genius

San peoples had spread across southern Africa by around 10,000 B.C.E., reaching Cape Agulhas at the continent’s southern tip long before herder or farming cultures arrived. Their descendants still live across Botswana, Namibia, and neighboring countries today, carrying click-based languages and rock art traditions that trace one of the deepest-rooted branches of the human family tree.