Namibian Food: 18 Traditional Dishes to Try

Traditional Namibian food mixes indigenous staples, such as oshifima (stiff millet porridge) and mopane worms, with meat cooked over fire, from kapana to braai and potjiekos, and dishes German settlers brought over, like eisbein and apfelstrudel.

Namibia sits on the Atlantic coast of southern Africa, bordered by Angola, Zambia, Botswana and South Africa, and its cooking draws on two main strands: the food of its own peoples and the food colonial settlers brought with them. Before colonial rule, people gathered wild fruits, nuts, bulbs and leaves and hunted game; cattle brought milk and meat; and from the nineteenth century German settlers left a mark that's still strong. Below are 18 of the dishes you'll meet, and the AFN recipes for the ones you can cook at home.

Snacks and street food

1. Biltong

Strips of beef or game meat, seasoned with spice, cured and air-dried until firm. Think of it as southern Africa's answer to kilishi or beef jerky, with a deep, meaty flavour of its own. Make it with our biltong recipe.

2. Droëwors

Dried sausage made from ground beef or game, spiced with coriander, cloves and nutmeg, then cured and dried. It's the slim, chewy cousin of boerewors. Try our droëwors recipe.

3. Kapana

Kapana is one of Namibia's best-loved street foods: beef cut into small pieces, seasoned and grilled over hot coals by roadside vendors, then eaten with a tangy tomato and onion relish. You'll smell the smoke before you see the stall.

4. Fried mopane worms

Mopane worms are caterpillars, fried until crunchy and nutty, and eaten as a snack or starter. In the north they're one of the things people scoop up with oshifima.

Main dishes

5. Potjiekos (Afrikaans stew on the fire)

A slow-cooked stew made in a round, three-legged cast-iron pot set over an open fire. It usually combines meat (game, beef or chicken) with vegetables and spices, cooked long enough for everything to come together. Get our potjiekos recipe.

6. Pap en wors (boerewors sausage)

Thick, crumbly maize porridge with grilled boerewors sausage, often with tomato and onion relish spooned over. Cook the sausage from our boerewors recipe and the porridge from our mealie pap recipe.

7. Eisbein (pork knuckle)

Pickled pork knuckle, boiled gently until the meat falls off the bone, and served German-style with sauerkraut and spätzle (egg noodles).

8. Braai (open-fire grilling)

Namibians grill a lot of meat: beef, lamb chops, and game such as kudu and oryx. Street skewers are often coated in sauces such as peanut butter, lemon and chilli. Our braai guide covers the fire and the meat.

9. Namibian venison (kudu, oryx and springbok)

In Namibia, venison means kudu, springbok, oryx and other game rather than deer, and each one eats differently: springbok is fine-grained and mild, oryx is denser and stronger, and kudu sits somewhere between them. All of them are very lean, so the meat is either cooked fast and served rare or braised long and slow with added liquid. Our Namibian venison recipe takes the slow road with a yoghurt and whole-spice curry, which is a modern take rather than a traditional Namibian one.

Sides and breads

10. Oshifima (millet porridge)

Oshifima is stiff porridge made from mahangu, the local name for pearl millet, and the Gondwana Collection calls it the most important food in northern Namibia. It's the daily staple of the Oshiwambo-speaking north, where homesteads sit beside mahangu fields and family meals revolve around the grain.

11. Sauerkraut

Tangy fermented cabbage, another German import, served on the side to cut through rich meat dishes.

12. Omajowa mushrooms

Wild mushrooms that grow on termite hills during the rainy season. They're a seasonal treat, sautéed with garlic, butter and salt.

13. Brötchen

Brötchen are German bread rolls, soft and light, filled with things like rohack (minced raw meat) or fleischsalat (cold meat salad).

14. Vetkoek (fried bread)

Vetkoek, a traditional fried-dough bread, is the other bread you'll meet. Make it with our vetkoek recipe.

15. Roosterkoek and stokbrood (fire breads)

Roosterkoek and stokbrood are dough balls or bread sticks cooked over hot coals until crisp outside and soft inside, then eaten with butter and honey or cheese.

16. Geelrys (yellow rice)

Geelrys is sweet yellow rice flavoured with turmeric, lemon rind, raisins and cinnamon, and it's shared with South Africa; see our Cape Malay yellow rice.

Namibian desserts

17. Melktert (milk tart)

Melktert is a custard tart in sweet pastry, dusted with cinnamon.

18. Apfelstrudel

Apfelstrudel is flaky pastry filled with spiced apple and raisins, often finished with an apricot jam glaze, and the bakery at Solitaire, in the Namib-Naukluft area, is famous for it.

Baster traditional food: what we know

The Basters, or Rehoboth Basters, are a community of mixed Khoekhoe and European descent who settled around Rehoboth in central Namibia in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Because they speak Afrikaans and their culture is largely Afrikaner-influenced, the Afrikaans-named dishes on this list, potjiekos, roosterkoek, droëwors and pap en wors, are a fair place to start. We haven't found a reliable written record of dishes unique to Baster cooking, and if that's your family's table, we'd love to hear what's on it.

Oshiwambo traditional food

In northern Namibia, home to the Oshiwambo-speaking people, meals centre on mahangu. Oshifima is the daily staple, scooped up with the right hand and eaten with wild spinach, beans, mopane worms, fish, chicken or meat, and oshikundu (also called ontaku) is the fermented drink made from the same flour. Women traditionally harvest and thresh the mahangu, winnow it in flat baskets and pound it into flour in wooden mortars.

What do Namibians eat for breakfast?

Pap is the usual start: thick maize porridge, often served with tomato and onion relish and some boerewors. In the north, oshifima or a mix of mahangu and maize porridge does the same job.

Namibian food questions

What is Namibia's national dish?

We couldn't find an official one. Kapana and grilled meat skewers are the country's best-loved street food, and oshifima is the daily staple in the north.

What is Namibia's most popular food?

Grilled meat. Kapana and meat skewers, grilled over flames and sold at the roadside, are everywhere.

What is mahangu?

Mahangu is pearl millet. It's pounded into flour for oshifima porridge and oshikundu, a fermented drink.

Why is there German food in Namibia?

German settlers arrived in the nineteenth century, and their food stayed. You'll still find eisbein, sauerkraut, brötchen and apfelstrudel, and German lagers such as Tafel and Windhoek are still brewed in the country.