The Namib Desert, one of the oldest drylands on Earth with an estimated age of 43 million years, lies along the entire coast of Namibia, from the Kunene River and the Angolan border in the north (S 17.27°) to the Orange River and the South African border in the south (S 28.64°). This coastal desert is a land of two halves. Much of the northern sector, from the Kuiseb River (S 23.11°) to the Angolan border, is a flat calcrete gravel desert. The southern sector, from the Kuiseb River to the South African border, is largely sand dunes (the Namib 'Sand-Sea', a UNESCO World Heritage Site). The climate of the Namib Desert, in terms of water relations, is distinctive. The Atlantic coastal regions, which are strongly influenced by the coastal upwelling of the cold southern Atlantic Benguela current, receive minimal rainfall, but are regularly inundated with fog which rolls in from the sea overnight and can penetrate inland for up to 60 km. Many of the coastal species, both plants and animals, are specially adapted to capture fog water. The interior hyper-arid regions of the Namib Desert receive no fog and little rain, while the eastern zone receives ‘regular’ seasonal rainfall. Although a strong driver of plant and insect species diversity, the effect of water-input zonation on the microbiology of the desert soils remained largely unknown until teams of researchers led by Prof. Don Cowan, initially from the University of the Western Cape (2009 to 2012) and subsequently from the University of Pretoria (2013 to 2022), undertook annual research expeditions to the Gobabeb Research Station (now, Gobabeb-Namib Research Institute; https://gobabeb.org/) to unravel the microbial ecology of the Namib Desert.