Mariental, Namibia

Mariental is a town in south central Namibia's Hardap region, on the B1 national road about 232 kilometers north of Keetmanshoop and 274 kilometers southeast of Windhoek. It was founded in 1912 as a railway stop between Windhoek and Keetmanshoop by German Lutheran missionaries, named after Maria, the wife of the area's first colonial settler Hermann Brandt, and was proclaimed a town in 1920 and a municipality in 1946. As of 2023 the town had 18,494 inhabitants, up from 12,478 in 2011, and serves as the administrative capital of the Hardap region with a substantial Nama speaking population. The nearby Hardap Dam, Namibia's second largest reservoir, supports irrigated agriculture including corn, fruit, vegetables and animal fodder, while the wider region relies on game farming, sheep and ostrich farming, export grapes, cotton, lucerne and dairying.