Owambo

The Ovambo, also called Aawambo or Ambo, are kindred Bantu peoples of the seasonally flooded plains of northern Namibia and southern Angola, a country known as Ovamboland. They comprise several tribes, including the Kwanyama, the largest.

From the 1300s their ancestors moved southwest from the Zambia region, settling along the Angola-Namibia border and spreading south into Namibia in the 1600s. They kept cattle and cultivated millet and sorghum along seasonal watercourses called oshanas, remaining almost untouched by Swahili-Arab and European traders until the 1800s. Closely related to the Herero and the Kavango, the Ovambo tribes kept their own royal lines and measured wealth chiefly in cattle long before colonial rule reached their plains.