Zambezi Region
Zambezi's Caprivi Strip, Germany's 1890 corridor to the river, contains Namibia's only tropical wetlands—renamed in 2013 but still marginalized with 28% unemployment.
Zambezi occupies the Caprivi Strip, the narrow corridor that German diplomacy obtained in 1890 to access the Zambezi River and theoretically connect to German East Africa. Named after Chancellor Leo von Caprivi who negotiated the acquisition, the region was renamed in 2013 to eliminate colonial administrators from Namibia's maps—the symbolic decolonization that legal boundaries cannot accomplish.
The strip's unique geography creates conditions unlike anywhere else in Namibia—tropical climate, high rainfall, swamps and floodplains along the Zambezi making this the country's wettest region. Population of 142,373 at just 9.8 persons per km² reflects the challenges that wetland terrain creates for settlement, most communities supporting subsistence farming, fishing, and limited tourism.
Unemployment of 28% confirms the formal economy's absence, the remoteness from Windhoek and major markets limiting commercial development. The 2024 drought affected even this well-watered region, climate stress that spare no area. Whether the Zambezi can develop tourism around its unique wetland ecology—or whether the strip remains an impoverished appendage that colonial ambition created—depends on infrastructure investment that distance from the capital deters.