he can sell bitcoins for paypal @ localbitcoins.com
or any other websites out there. then he can withdraw the money from paypal to his bank account or what ever...
but i am sure there are some locals that would love to buy those bitcoins from him..he just needs to post on his local forums and search for them.

I don't think many people there have heard of bitcoin,  it's like they are 20 years behind.

I thought bitcoin was supposed to be great for countries like this?

How about:

He sends back to you
You convert to local currency (USD?)
You bank wire it over to him

tell him to go here: https://localbitcoins.com/country/NA register and find someone that wants to buy his BTC for USD. should be pretty easy

I think we are missing the point here... OP's imaginary story has hit the nail on the head - truth is Bitcoin is not ready for remittance around the world, not without support of WesterUnion or MoneyGram like services able to exchange it to local currencies. Bitcoin is too new and not very good at most things it's designed for. With time this will change but for now we just have to take a punch instead of sending Namibian man to a Machete exchange (sorry, local bitcoins).

He should be able to use localbitcoins: https://localbitcoins.com/country/NA

Or https://www.coincorner.com/ if he can accept credit card payments paid in USD.

You can try with bit Bitstamp, there is no fee for existing users for next 5 weeks, i assume for new users too. www.bitstamp.net
Bank account, some personal information and scanned documents (ID or passport and proof of residence) is needed to open an account.   

What about Kipochi. Their site seems promising. https://www.kipochi.com/namibia/bitcoin

As some of you guessed I didn't really send £1000 worth of bitcoin to Namibia but what I wanted to do was discuss and highlight the difficulties of using the currency in places where it would be most beneficial.
I am married into a Namibian family. My wife likes to send funds to her parents in Namibia every couple of months. She has been doing this for the last 9 years.

Currently they use one of her bankcards and she has given them her PIN. She uses a UK bank account specifically for the purpose.
So, when she decides she wants to send money she transfers money from regular account to the account her parents have a card for and just does a regular bank transfer. This works fine however she probably shouldn't have given her card and PIN to someone else.

Most people are not in a position to do this.

Prior to doing it this way or if their are some issues with the account she would use Western Union.

I showed her how simple is is to send btc if you have Mycelium installed on your phone. But we were discussing what you would do with it.

At this point LocalBitcoins is proberbly out of the question, The nearest big town is a two hour drive away. Travel to Cape Town involves a flight.
PayPal.. I don't know. I had a bad experience with it related to bitcoin previously.

I guess bitcoin just isn't ready for these communities yet.