Epupa Dam, Namibia / Pages

Namibia’s Kunene River valley is the ancestral home of 12,000 Himba people, a semi–nomadic people who have lived there for more than 500 years, tending their flocks and making their sacred fires (okuruwo). After surviving drought, war, genocide and other disasters, the most serious threat to their existence is the proposed Epupa Dam. The dam would flood their remote oasis; bring roads, construction camps and development into their midst; introduce diseases common to the still waters of reservoirs, and potentially end the Himba way of life forever. Evicted from the area, they will also lose touch with their clanspeople across the river in Angola. "The effect of resettlement would likely be far worse: resettlement would result not simply in a change of lifestyle but in their (Himbas) destruction," states a report jointly authored by Earthlife–Namibia and a German environmental organization, Urgewald.

A review by outside experts of the 1997 Epupa Dam Feasibility Study, coordinated by IRN and Earthlife Africa –– Namibia. Read IRN’s press release (Jan. 21, 1998) on this review.