It is situated in the Ongandjera tribal area 73 kilometres (45 mi) west of Oshakati on the main road MR123 (Outapi — Tsandi — Okahao).

Okahao is the largest town in the Ongandjera tribal area, the birthplace of Namibia's founding president Sam Nujoma.

Already four days later, Pietari Kurvinen, Martti Rautanen, Karl August Weikkolin and Antti Piirainen, left for Uukwambi, to the court of King Nayuma, where they arrived on July 16.

Heinrich Kleinschmidt, the father of Rautanen's fiancée Frieda Kleinschmidtin had earlier given the same name to a mission station he had founded in Namaland.

By the end of July, Rautanen had built a house for the mission station, and Tobias Reijonen, a new arrival that year, joined him there at the time.

The daily life in Ongandjera was difficult for them, since they had few European provisions, and few goods with which to exchange grain from the local people.

When he had recovered sufficiently, he left the mission station in the care of Reijonen and Karl August Weikkolin and went to Hereroland, where he married Frieda Kleinschmid, before going to Walvis Bay, where he convalesced from his illness.

[3] In the 1890s, both the Rhenish Mission and the Catholic Church wanted to begin missionary work in Ongandjera, but the Finns were opposed to this, and nothing came of the Germans’ plans.

After some negotiations between the Finns and the Germans, it was decided to establish a joint Finnish-German station in Ongandjera, but the board of directors of the Finnish Missionary Society did not agree to this.

The South West African Administrator's Office had declared that in the future, the Finns would be allowed to work in Ondonga only, while Oukwanyama would be given the Anglicans, and Uukwambi and Ongandjera would be given to the Catholics.

In the run up to the 2009 general election, campaigners for the Rally for Democracy and Progress were driven out of the town by school children.

The Independent Patriots for Change (IPC), an opposition party formed in August 2020, obtained 141 votes and gained the remaining two seats.