Angola–Namibia border

Rivers and straight lines

Portugal’s Angola grew from a charter of 1575, while the Namib Desert long kept outsiders from Namibia’s interior; Germany proclaimed a protectorate there in 1884. A declaration of 30 December 1886 set the boundary along the Kunene from its mouth to the falls at Ruacana, east along a parallel to the Okavango, down that river, and then east to the Zambezi. An Anglo-German treaty of 1890 gave German South-West Africa a corridor at least 20 miles wide to the Zambezi, later called the Caprivi Strip.^[1]

South Africa ran the territory under a League of Nations mandate from 1920. The UN General Assembly ended that mandate in 1966, and in 1971 the International Court of Justice advised that South Africa’s presence in Namibia was illegal.^[1]

A dam on the Kunene

Namibia and Angola are developing the Baynes hydropower project on the Kunene, and roads and a community centre have already been built in the area. More than 1,000 people in Namibia’s Kunene region signed a petition against it, saying it threatens ancestral land and the environment and was not discussed with residents; the project leader said consultations had run for years and critics were a minority not directly affected. A researcher opposed to it said three decades of state plans for the region had brought no real change for the Ovahimba and Ovazemba people.^[2]

“It is the minority of people, who are also not directly affected, who continue to raise their criticism against the development of the project.”^[2]