Omatjette (also: Omatjete) is a village in the

Erongo Region Erongo is one of the 14 regions of Namibia. The capital is Swakopmund. It is named after Mount Erongo, a well-known landmark in Namibia and in this area. Erongo contains the municipalities of Walvis Bay, Swakopmund, Henties Bay and Omaruru, as ...

Namibia Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country on the west coast of Southern Africa. Its borders include the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south; in the no ...

, situated on the road D2344 from Omaruru to

Khorixas Khorixas is a town with about 9,000 inhabitants in the southern part of the Kunene Region, Namibia. It was the capital of the Damaraland bantustan before Namibia's independence. It is the administrative capital of Khorixas Constituency. Most of ...

. It belongs to the Dâures electoral constituency but there are plans to split from it to become a constituency on its own. Omatjette has approximately 12,000 residents, many of them living there only temporarily. The village name was originally ''Omatjate'' (

Otjiherero Herero (Otjiherero) is a Bantu language spoken by the Herero and Mbanderu peoples in Namibia and Botswana, as well as by small communities of people in southwestern Angola. There were speakers in these countries between 2015 and 2018. Distr ...

: tasty water), referring to a fountain that today is on the western edge of the settlement. The water-related name of the settlement and surrounding geographical features stems from the scarcity and value of water in this

semi-arid A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a aridity, dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below Evapotranspiration#Potential evapotranspiration, potential evapotranspiration, but not as l ...

terrain; the Omatjette area only receives about 400mm of annual rain. The village is not connected to Namibia's water network.

References

Villages in Namibia Populated places in the Erongo Region {{Namibia-geo-stub