Woman vies for top job

Vice-president Nandi-Ndaitwah faces major challenges.

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Political veteran Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah hopes to win Namibia's election tomorrow, becoming the country's first female president as her party prepares for its toughest race since independence.

Current vice-president and candidate of the ruling South West Africa People's Organisation (Swapo), "NNN" as she is known, is facing at least two major challenges.

One is convincing young voters hit by high unemployment to pick her as next leader and the second is persuading the electorate to support a woman in a country analysts like John Mendelsohn describe as "patriarchal".

"Probably a lot of people [in Namibia] would not be terribly enthusiastic about voting for a woman.

"But we have seen it in other parts of Africa," said the author of an atlas on Namibia.

Since Ellen Johnson Sirleaf won elections in Liberia in 2006, becoming Africa's first female head of state, the number of women leaders on the continent has been low.