This article is part of a Women and Leadership special report highlighting women who have forged new paths.
In March, right around her 31st birthday, Dr. Esperance Luvindao was named Namibia’s new minister of health and social services, making her the youngest health minister in Africa.
Before her appointment, the youngest African minister of health was Dr. Stephen Modise of Botswana, who was 37 when he started in his role last year. “When I was appointed,” laughed Dr. Luvindao during a video interview, “he texted me, and he’s like ‘Man, you took my position.’”
Joking aside, Dr. Luvindao, a general practitioner and the founder of a health care nonprofit, has done a lot in her three trailblazing decades. Born in 1994 in Windhoek, Namibia, she knew from an early age that she wanted to be a doctor. Her parents died when she was a young girl. “When I got to high school, I said, ‘But should they have died? Wasn’t there anything we could do?’” she recalled. “And so that’s when I decided I want to help people, so that another little girl doesn’t have to lose her parents.”
Her other dream was to study at Harvard — she has a master’s degree in health care management and is currently working on her doctorate in public health — and she was accepted to study there this fall. However, when the country’s newly elected president, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, asked her to take on the position, she put her Ivy League dreams on hold — for now. The following conversation has been edited and condensed.
Namibia is the only country in Africa where women not only hold the top three government positions — in this case, president, vice president and speaker of the National Assembly — but also hold more than half of the cabinet positions. What is it like to be in such a groundbreaking government?
It shouldn’t be the case anymore, but even in 2025 there were some people that were like, “Will women really be able to do it?” The celebration really came from a few, and then later, when others started seeing the results and the fruits, then they started saying, “Look at what women can do.” So that’s the sad part, that there’s a lot of work that still needs to be done.
What are your goals for this position?
The first thing is access to medication. A few months ago, there was a headline in one of our papers that said that the government had run out of medication. Now there’s a whole story to that, where there are a lot of corruption issues. There are people that benefit from the system not working, and so you end up with a lot of middlemen, you have inflated prices, and then you have no medication because the middlemen cannot stick to their word.
Also, digitization is important. We still use paper-based health care records. That means every single time a patient comes to you, you have to start from scratch: “What is your name, etc.” We have now finalized the digital health policy, which will be launching this year, so I’m excited about that. And then lastly, innovative health financing, to get health care in Namibia to a place where it is self-sustainable. I know it is possible.
Can you talk a bit about your nonprofit, OSAAT African Health Foundation, which is focused on women’s health?
Menga, our digital health component, allows women in rural and semirural communities to access prescribed medication without leaving their local areas. It can be used for health in general, but because the focus was women’s health, we emphasized that if a woman is in an unfortunate situation, like where she’s raped, she can access post-exposure prophylaxis without leaving her local area.
With “Emily’s Health,” we educate women and girls about sexual and reproductive health and women’s health in their native languages. We took that a step further to write a book in eight languages. We focused on contraceptives, breast cancer, H.I.V. and S.T.D.s. Now we use this to go out and educate women. Just last week, my operations manager reported back that we were able to reach about 8,000 women in that week’s outreach alone. When I went to see the president for the first time, I took her the book as a gift. She said, “Imagine if we could do this at scale, imagine the lives we could change.”
Earlier this year, the Trump administration dismantled U.S.A.I.D., which contributed to international development in Africa. How did that affect Namibia?
It was heartbreaking. Now, Namibia’s shock was different, because Namibia is one of the only countries in Africa that pay for all of our own ARVs [antiretroviral]. But the key part where we were heavily affected was in terms of jobs and in terms of supportive services, such as your counseling, your testing, all of that. One of the things that it has taught me is the importance of building self-reliance and not being dependent.
Immediately when this happened, somebody on my team said, “There’s another large grant that we can apply for.” And I said, “I don’t mind us applying for grants, but what I want us to do is a shift of mentality, because what if we get this grant, and then three years later you get dropped again?” What is the strategy to ensure long-term sustainability should this happen? It was great to have them, but we didn’t need them. We can make sure that we still offer our people dignity in health care without them.
What do you do with any free time you have left?
I do kickboxing. I love it. I was competing in mixed martial arts. But then when I was appointed, I thought it would be a bit awkward, if your Minister of Health knocked out someone from Zimbabwe, and then it’s made headlines.
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