On 19 February 1988, a bomb blast at the First National Bank in Oshakati killed 27 people and badly injuring nearly 30 others, most of them nurses and teachers.

[4] Oshakati is located near the B1, Namibia's main highway, which stretches from South Africa through the capital Windhoek and on to the Angolan border.

In April 2006, the Oshakati town council building was inaugurated by Botswana's president Festus Mogae.

The Oshakati Master Plan Project is underway to build a 23 kilometres (14 mi) dike around the town, to deepen and straighten the river, and to resettle people living near the riverbed and clogging the flow of water.

In the 2015 local authority election SWAPO won by a landslide (4,569 votes) and gained six council seats.

The Independent Patriots for Change (IPC), an opposition party formed in August 2020, obtained 1,887 votes and gained three seats.

The Oshana Regional Study and Resource Center was established on September 17, 2014, through the assistance of the Millennium Challenge Account Namibia (MCA-N).

[14] Situated between the GIPF house and the Social Security regional head office in Oshakati, the library can host up to 600 people, has 220 study spaces, a meeting hall that can accommodate 125 seated people, a video conferencing room, and shelving spaces for up to 35,000 books.