Born: 28 October 1926, Namibia
Died: 26 April 2010
Country most active: Namibia
Also known as: Hulda Ngatjikare
Hulda Kamboi Shipanga was a Namibian nurse, midwife, and advisor to the Namibian Ministry of Health. She was Namibia’s first black nurse to be appointed as a senior sister.
Shipanga pursued education as a teacher and nurse in South Africa. Upon returning to South West Africa, she worked at a hospital in Windhoek. Subsequently, she undertook further training as a midwife, a profession she practiced in Old Location, a segregated area for the city’s black residents. During an uprising on December 10, 1959, Shipanga stood out as one of the few nurses who tended to the wounded, as all doctors in Windhoek’s hospitals, then exclusively white due to the Bantu Education Act, refused treatment.
Continuing her education, Shipanga became an operating room nurse, specializing in orthopedic surgery and pediatrics in the United Kingdom. She emerged as the most qualified nurse during the transition from South West Africa to Namibia. Shortly after Namibia gained independence, she broke barriers by becoming the first black nurse promoted to senior sister, a promotion previously prohibited by apartheid laws.
President Sam Nujoma appointed Shipanga as an advisor to Health Minister Nickey Iyambo, a position she continued under his successor, Libertina Amathila, despite being in retirement. At the age of 74, she returned to Aminuis, her birthplace, and passed away in Windhoek in 2010. Hulda Kamboi Shipanga’s groundbreaking career contributed significantly to the advancement of healthcare and the dismantling of racial barriers in Namibia.