Omagano Kankondi a Namibian product designer, researcher, and social innovation strategist fascinated with people, their adaptations, their problem-solving capacities, and the way they build meaning within the places and systems they inhabit. She has worked with communities, entrepreneurs, universities, public institutions, international organisations, and consultancies. 

She studied industrial design before completing two master’s degrees: first, in entrepreneurship and innovation management and, secondly, in design-focused social innovation. 

Omagano, has headed the solutions mapping department at the UNDP Accelerator Lab in Namibia which put her at the centre of some of the country’s most ambitious public innovation experiments. Informal economies, entrepreneurship, creative industries, and public-sector innovation are just some of her professional curiosities that directed her towards the business of designing programmes built to meet complicated social and economic problems. She is especially interested in the intersection between design, indigenous knowledge, local culture, and contemporary African life. 

Whether she is thinking about an economic system, a piece of furniture, a public programme or the story tucked inside an everyday object, she keeps returning to the same question: what can we learn when we pay closer attention to people, places, and knowledge that is already around us?