Khomas Region
Khomas houses Windhoek and 42% of Namibia's millionaires, the capital capturing government and finance while symbolizing the country's extreme inequality.
Khomas contains Windhoek, Namibia's capital and only major city, the urban primacy pattern concentrating 494,605 people in a region that also encompasses surrounding highlands. The capital's 268,000+ residents represent the formal sector employment, government functions, and financial services that peripheral regions lack, creating the wealth concentration—1,400 of Namibia's 3,300 dollar millionaires live in Windhoek—that characterizes small countries.
The region's central highland position provided the climate advantages that German colonial administrators favored when establishing Windhoek as capital, the altitude moderating temperatures that coastal and northern lowlands cannot escape. This colonial-era infrastructure decision created path dependence that independent Namibia inherited and expanded, the capital accumulating functions that alternative locations might have served.
While Khomas captures the benefits of urban concentration, the region also demonstrates Namibia's extreme inequality—the GDP per capita of $4,413 masking distributions where millionaires and unemployed share the same regional boundary. The November 2024 election of Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah as first female president, sworn in March 2025, brings new leadership to the capital that symbolizes both Namibia's prosperity and its persistent challenges.