Nomadic pastoralism in southern Africa is historically associated with the Khoekhoen, among whom the precolonial Nama are the group most familiar from early historical accounts of Namibia. Linguistic evidence places the Khoekhoen within southern Africa, while genetic studies and shared systems of kinship and religious practice are also cited as evidence of a common origin. Their history is therefore framed through several kinds of evidence rather than through written records alone.

The Khoekhoen are described as having diverged from the broader Tshu-Kwe group in northern Botswana about 2,000 years ago. They had acquired livestock and pottery from Bantu-speaking peoples who had begun to settle in that region as farmers. A conventional model proposed a rapid southward movement into the more arid western parts of southern Africa, but the archaeological record later made that interpretation more complicated.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the spread of pastoralism may have involved local hunter-gatherer communities acquiring livestock in environments where pastoral practices were viable. In Namibia, the strongest concentration of early evidence lies in the northwest, while the southern part of the country appears to have been more sparsely occupied during the first millennium AD. The source consequently rejects a simple immigration model as a general explanation.