Oshikoto Region
Oshikoto's 257,302 people divide between northern crop farming and southern mining/ranching, 82% rural and heavily stressed by 2024 drought conditions.
Oshikoto spans Namibia's north-central territory with 257,302 inhabitants distributed across distinct zones—crop agriculture in the wetter north, cattle rearing and mining in the drier south. This internal diversity creates multiple economic bases that pure agricultural or pure mining regions lack, though poverty rates remain high throughout.
The mining sector in southern Oshikoto provides formal employment that subsistence farming cannot match, the extraction economy creating enclaves of relative prosperity surrounded by rural poverty. The population remains 81.7% rural, urban settlements limited to small towns that service surrounding agricultural communities.
The 2024 drought produced very poor grazing conditions throughout Oshikoto, the cattle mortality and crop failure that climate variability causes threatening food security for populations that cash income cannot easily supplement. Land rights tensions arose as farmers from other areas entered with cattle, competing for resources that drought made scarce. Whether Oshikoto can manage the climate volatility that defines its agricultural economy—or whether drought frequency eventually displaces populations toward urban areas—tests rural Namibia's adaptive capacity.