Namibia: Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah is the new president of Namibia. She has been sworn as the first female president on Friday, March 21, 2025 marking the historic moment for the country. Her inauguration coincided with Namibia’s 35th independence anniversary and was hailed from a stadium to the presidential office due to heavy rain.
Nandi-Ndaitwah aged 72, took over the office as Namibia’s fifth president, and succeeded Nangolo Mbumba who had been serving as interim president following the death of Hage Geingob in February 2024.
The ceremony included several African leaders from South Africa, Zambia, Congo, Botswana, Angola and Kenya who attended the ceremony along with Tanzania’s President – Samia Suluhu Hassan and former leaders Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and Joyce Banda of Malawi.
Considering her win, Netumbo stated at the ceremony that the task facing her as the fifth president of the Republic of Namibia is to preserve the gains of their independence and to ensure that the unfinished agenda of economic and social advancement is carried forward with vigour and determination.
Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah is a long-term loyalist of the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) which has been in power since the country that gained independence in 1990 after a long struggle against apartheid South Africa. She joined SWAPO and a liberation movement resisting South Africa’s white-minority rule, when she was only of age 14.
However, the party has made changes and improved the lives of the black in majority, as the legacy of apartheid that can still be seen in patterns of wealth and land ownership. Namibia is geographically large country with a small population of three million.
Nandi-Ndaitwah said that the economy of Namibia partly relies on mineral exports that should work more on adding value to what Namibia extracts from the ground rather than exporting raw materials.
She also wants Namibia to focus more on creative industries and get the education sector to adjust to new economic realities. Nandi-Ndaitwah is only the second African woman to be directly elected as president after Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
She is continent’s only other female president at the moment is Tanzania’s Samia Suluhu Hassan who took up the role after her predecessor died in office in 2021.
Nandi-Ndaitwah wants to be judged on her merits, but she said that it was a good thing that they as countries are realising that just as men can do, women can also hold the position of authority.