Linda Scott 2023 Speaker

Namibian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

High Commission of the Republic of Namibia

Biography

“The High Commissioner of the Republic of Namibia, Linda Scott, arrived in London in December 2018. Her posting in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the second, as she began her diplomatic career in 1990 by opening the High Commission in London shortly after independence.

High Commissioner Scott is accompanied by her two sons who are at university.
While growing up in Windhoek, Namibia, and during her university career at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, Ms Scott was actively involved in anti-apartheid activities including in the church and as part of the Namibia National Student Organisation (NANSO) Completing her Bachelors and Honours degrees in Social Science and African Studies at the University of Cape Town, she returned to Namibia in 1989 to teach English at St. Joseph’s Catholic School (Döbra) before joining the diplomatic service. She later obtained a Masters in Governance and Political Transformation from the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa.

Immediately after independence she joined the Namibian Foreign Ministry and has spent over 30 years in the diplomatic service. High Commissioner Scott has served as First Secretary in Cuba, Sweden, Belgium, and Botswana, and as Counsellor in Nigeria and Ethiopia. She served as the Personal Assistant to then Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Rapporteur for the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women, during which time a new office for Women Affairs within the Office of the President was established. Her positions at the Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation included Desk Officer roles for a number of countries, from Latin America to the Balkans and Scandanavia. From 2007 to 2009, she was Deputy Director for Southern Africa and from 2014 to 2016 she held the position of Director of Multilateral Relations and Cooperation. In 2016 Linda Scott took up the position of Deputy Permanent Representative at the Namibian Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York.

Having presented credentials to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in May 2019, High Commissioner Scott has been concurrently accredited as High Commissioner to Malta, and Ambassador to Greece, Ireland and the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta.

She was elected to serve as First Vice President of the International Maritime Organisation Assembly from December 2021 and as Chair of the Board of Governors of the Commonwealth from July 2022.

Aside from her diplomatic career, the High Commissioner has obtained an Advanced Life Coach certification, and has translated several works from German and French. In her spare time, she loves coaching, reading, dancing and cooking.”