Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Southern Africa’s youngest independent state, Namibia (2.5 million), is the former German colony of South West Africa that was administered by South Africa from 1919 to 1990. The country is named after one of the world’s driest deserts (the Namib, which lines its coast). Territorially about as large as Texas and Oklahoma combined, only its far north receives enough moisture to enable subsistence farming, which is why most of the people live close to the Angolan border. Mining and ranching constitute the leading commercial activities, but even though orderly land reform is underway, much of the population still lives in poverty." [Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 17th Edition, p. 319]