Genetic Variation of Namibian Populations

Namibia, a country in South-west Sub-Saharan Africa, is one of the few Southern African countries where hunter-gatherer, pastoralist and farmer lifestyles all coexist. This makes Namibia a very interesting place to study the interactions that occur between groups with different lifestyles.

Working in collaboration with Dr Ockie Oosthuizen and Erica Oosthuizen, in 2010 and 2012 saliva samples were collected in Namibia from several groups within the country. MtDNA and Y chromosome analysis will be carried out on these samples, which will then be compared to data from other African populations available in the literature or generated by our group. We hope these comparisons will provide an insight into population movements and admixture dynamics. Given the recent genomic transition, we are also exploring  genome-wide SNP data to address issues related to