Botswana

Lefatshe la Botswana Republic of Botswana
Motto: Pula (Rain)
Anthem: Fatshe leno la rona (Blessed Be This Noble Land)
Capital (and largest city)		Gaborone 25°40′S 25°55′E
Official languages		English (Official), Tswana (National)
Government		Parliamentary republic
-	President	Duma Boko
-	Vice President	Ndaba Gaolathe
Independence
-	from the United Kingdom	September 30, 1966
Area
-	Total	581,730 km² (47th) 224,610 sq mi
-	Water (%)	2.6
Population
-	2022 census	2,359,609 (143rd)
-	Density	4.1/km² (231st) 10.58/sq mi
GDP (PPP)		2024 estimate
-	Total	$54.647 billion (124th)
-	Per capita	$20,158 (83rd)
GDP (nominal)		2024 estimate
-	Total	$21.90 billion (122nd)
-	Per capita	$7,859 (87th)
Gini (2015)		54.9
Currency		Pula (BWP)
Time zone		Central Africa Time (UTC+02)
Internet TLD		.bw
Calling code		[[++267]]

Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana, is a landlocked nation in Southern Africa that is considered one of the most stable economically and politically on the continent. The economy, closely tied to South Africa's, is dominated by mining (especially diamonds), cattle, and tourism. The government is trying to diversify its economy to reduce its dependence on the diamond trade.

History

The original inhabitants of southern Africa were the Bushmen (San) and Khoe peoples. Both speak click languages and lived as hunter-gatherers. About a thousand years ago, large chiefdoms emerged that were later eclipsed by the Great Zimbabwe Empire, which spread into eastern Botswana. Around 1300 C.E., peoples in present-day Transvaal began to coalesce into three main linguistic and political groups, including the Batswana.

The Batswana (plural of "Motswana"), a term also used to denote all citizens of Botswana, remain the country's major ethnic group today. Prior to European contact, the Batswana lived as herders and farmers under tribal rule. As groups broke off and moved to new land, new tribes were created.

Contacts with Europeans

During the 1700s, the slave and ivory trades were expanding. To resist these pressures, the national leader, King Shaka, formed the Zulu chiefdom. The conquered tribes began to move northwest into Botswana, destroying everything in their path. In their efforts to re-establish themselves at the end of this period, tribes began to exchange ivory and skins for guns with European traders, who had begun to reach the interior. Missionaries sent from Europe also spread to the interior, often at the invitation of chiefs who wanted guns and knew that the presence of missionaries encouraged traders. By 1880 every major village had a resident missionary, and their influence became permanent. Under the reign of king Khama III (reigned 1875–1923), Christianity prevailed, and he is considered one of the most significant converts. Currently more than 70 percent of the population consider themselves to be Christian.

Map of Botswana

In the late nineteenth century, hostilities broke out between the inhabitants of Botswana and tribes migrating into the territory from the Kalahari Desert. Tensions also escalated with the Boer settlers (Dutch) from the Transvaal. After appeals by the Batswana leaders for assistance, the British government in 1885 put "Bechuanaland" under its protection. The northern territory remained under direct administration as the Bechuanaland Protectorate and is today's Botswana, while the southern territory became part of the Cape Colony and is now part of the northwest province of South Africa.

When the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910 out of the main British colonies in the region, the Bechuanaland Protectorate, Basutoland (now Lesotho), and Swaziland were not included, but provision was made for their later incorporation. However, a vague undertaking was given to consult their inhabitants, and although successive South African governments sought to have the territories transferred, Britain kept delaying, and it never occurred. The election of the National Party government in 1948, which instituted apartheid, and South Africa's withdrawal from the Commonwealth in 1961, ended any prospect of incorporation of the territories into South Africa.

Route to independence

An expansion of British central authority and the evolution of tribal government resulted in the 1920 establishment of two advisory councils representing Africans and Europeans. Proclamations in 1934 regularized tribal rule and powers. A European-African advisory council was formed in 1951, and the 1961 constitution established a consultative legislative council.

In June 1964, Britain accepted proposals for democratic self-government in Botswana. The seat of government was moved from Mafikeng in South Africa to newly established Gaborone in 1965. The 1965 constitution led to the first general elections and to independence on September 30, 1966. Seretse Khama, a leader in the independence movement and the legitimate claimant to the Ngwato chiefship, was elected as the first president, re-elected twice, and died in office in 1980. The presidency passed to the sitting vice president, Quett Masire, who was elected in his own right in 1984 and re-elected in 1989 and 1994. Masire retired from office in 1998. The presidency passed to the vice president, Festus Mogae, who was elected in his own right in 1999 and re-elected by a landslide in 2004. He has said he will step down in 2008 before the next parliamentary election, scheduled for 2009.

Geography

Botswana is bordered by South Africa to the south, Namibia to the west, Zambia to the north, and Zimbabwe to the northeast. It is dominated by the Kalahari Desert, which covers up to 70 percent of the land surface. The Okavango Delta, the world's largest inland delta, is in the northwest. The Makgadikgadi Pan, a large salt pan, lies in the north. Botswana has diverse areas of wildlife habitat, including the Okavango Delta, the Kalahari Desert, grasslands, and savannas. The climate is mostly subtropical.

Politics

Botswana is a representative democratic republic where the president is elected by the National Assembly. Although it is a multi-party state, since independence the party system has been dominated by the Botswana Democratic Party. The government controls the state-owned radio and television broadcasters and limits opposition acess. In addition, the opposition parties disagree among themselves about the tactics and candidates to challenge the ruling party.

The chiefs of the eight largest tribes and seven sub-chiefs serve in a House of Chiefs, which advises the government on tribal affairs.

The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.

Botswana is divided into 9 districts and 28 sub-districts.

Economy

Since independence, Botswana has had the fastest growth in per capita income in the world, though that is now slowing. The government has maintained a sound fiscal policy and a negligible level of foreign debt. It earned the highest sovereign credit rating in Africa and has stockpiled foreign exchange reserves. Botswana's impressive economic record has been built on the foundation of using revenue generated from diamond mining to fuel economic development through prudent fiscal policies and a cautious foreign policy. Debswana, the only diamond mining company operating in Botswana, is 50 percent owned by the government and generates about half of all government revenues. The government is trying to start processing plants for its own gems. The country is also a major beef exporter, since much of the land is too dry for any other use than raising livestock. However, an irrigation system has been initiated by the government to encourage farmers to raise commercial crops. Most of the workforce is engaged in agriculture. Mining jobs account for less than four percent, and the unemployment rate is about 24 percent, though unofficial estimates place it as high as 40 percent.

Over 17 percent of the country's land area has been allocated as national parks and game reserves. Their abundant wildlife is a top draw for tourists, another source of revenue.

Economic development spending is being cut, however, as a result of budget deficits and rising expenditure on health care services. The government recognizes that HIV/AIDS will affect the economy and is trying to combat the epidemic, including free anti-retroviral drug treatment and a nation-wide Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission program.

Some of Botswana's budget deficits can be traced to relatively high military expenditures, which some critics contend are unnecessary given the low likelihood of international conflict (though the Botswana government also makes use of these troops for multilateral operations and assistance efforts).

Foreign investment

Palapye children, 1987, after the first rain for years.

Botswana seeks to further diversify its economy away from minerals, which account for a third of GDP, down from nearly half of GDP in the early 1990s. Foreign investment and management are welcomed in Botswana. Botswana abolished foreign exchange controls in 1999, has a low corporate tax rate (15 percent), no prohibitions on foreign ownership of companies, and a moderate inflation rate. The World Economic Forum rates Botswana as one of the two most economically competitive nations in Africa.

With its proven record of good economic governance, Botswana was ranked as Africa's least corrupt country by Transparency International in 2004. Botswana is ranked as by far the best credit risk in Africa. Despite continued challenges such as small market size, landlocked location, and cumbersome bureaucratic processes, Botswana remains one of the best investment opportunities in the developing world.

There is increasing investment from China, which has already built hospitals, schools, and roads and is a potential investor in the tourism industry.

Trade organizations

Because of its history and geography, Botswana has long had deep ties to the economy of South Africa. The Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU), comprising Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, and South Africa, dates from 1910 and is the world’s oldest customs union. Namibia joined in 1990. Under this arrangement, South Africa has collected levies from customs, sales, and excise duties for all five members, sharing out proceeds based on each country's portion of imports. The exact formula for sharing revenues and the decision-making authority over duties — held exclusively by the government of South Africa — became increasingly controversial, and the members renegotiated the arrangement in 2001. The new structure has now been formally ratified and a SACU Secretariat has been established in Windhoek, Namibia. Following South Africa's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), Botswana also joined; many of the SACU duties are thus declining, making products from outside the area more competitive in Botswana. Currently the SACU countries and the United States are negotiating a free trade agreement. Botswana is currently also negotiating a free-trade agreement with Mercosur and an Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union as part of SADC.

Gaborone is host to the headquarters of the fourteen-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC), a successor to the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (launched in 1980), which focused its efforts on freeing regional economic development from dependence on apartheid South Africa. SADC embraced the newly democratic South Africa as a member in 1994 and has a broad mandate to encourage growth, development, and economic integration in Southern Africa. SADC's Trade Protocol, which was launched on September 1, 2000, calls for the elimination of all tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade by 2008 among the 11 signatory countries. If successful, it will give Botswana companies free access to the far larger regional market. SADC's failure to distance itself from the Mugabe government in Zimbabwe has diminished the number of opportunities for cooperation between the U.S. and SADC.

Foreign relations

Cattle at a water hole near Serowe

Botswana puts a premium on economic and political integration in Southern Africa. It seeks to make SADC a working vehicle for economic development, and promotes efforts to make the region self-policing in terms of preventative diplomacy, conflict resolution, and good governance. It has welcomed post-apartheid South Africa as a partner in these efforts. Botswana joins the African consensus on most major international matters and is a member of international organizations such as the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, and the African Union.

Botswana has taken in economic and political refugees from Zimbabwe, and tension exists in border areas where the newcomers compete for scarce jobs. Another source of friction is Namibia's desire to pump water from the Okavango River, which would divert it from the delta whose wildlife is a main tourist attraction for Botswana.

Demographics

The Tswana are the majority ethnic group in Botswana, with Kalanga and the San (Basarwa) in the minority, as well as Kgalagadi and people of European ancestry.

Native groups include the Bayei, Bambukushu, Basubia, Baherero and Bakgalagadi. The Indian minority is made up of both recent migrants and descendants of Indian migrants who arrived from Mozambique, Kenya, Tanzania, Mauritius, and South Africa.

Since 2000, because of deteriorating economic conditions in Zimbabwe, the number of Zimbabweans in Botswana has risen into the tens of thousands. Fewer than 10,000 San people are still living their traditional hunter-gatherer way of life. Since the mid-1990s, the central government of Botswana has been trying to move the San out of their historic lands, likely because they live on a diamond-rich region.

In 2010, James Anaya, as the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people for the United Nations, described loss of land as a major contributor to many of the problems facing Botswana's indigenous people, citing the San's eviction from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) as a special example. Among Anaya's recommendations in a report to the United Nations Human Rights Council was that development programmes should promote, in consultation with indigenous communities such as the San and Bakgalagadi people, activities in harmony with the culture of those communities such as traditional hunting and gathering activities.

Languages

The official language of Botswana is English, while Setswana is widely spoken across the country. In Setswana, prefixes are more important than they are in many other languages, because Setswana is a Bantu language and has noun classes denoted by these prefixes. They include Bo, which refers to the country, Ba, which refers to the people, Mo, which is one person, and Se which is the language. For example, the main ethnic group of Botswana is the Tswana people, hence the name Botswana for its country. The people as a whole are Batswana, one person is a Motswana, and the language they speak is Setswana.

Other languages spoken in Botswana include Kalanga (Sekalanga), Sarwa (Sesarwa), Ndebele, Kgalagadi, Tswapong, !Xóõ, Yeyi, and, in some parts, Afrikaans.

Religion

The majority of the country's citizens identify as Christians. Anglicans, Methodists, and the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa make up the majority of Christian denominations.

The nation also has small numbers of Muslims (mainly from South Asia), Hindus, and members of the Baháʼí Faith.

Health

Scottish Livingstone Hospital in Molepolole

Botswana's healthcare system has been steadily improving and expanding.Specifically, infant mortality and maternal mortality rates are steadily declining. Eighty-five per cent of the population live within a five-kilometre (3.1 mi) radius of a health facility. Seventy-three per cent of pregnant women access antenatal care services at least four times. Almost 100 per cent of births in Botswana take place in hospitals.

Like elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, Botswana has been adversely affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Programs were launched to make treatment available and to educate the populace about the epidemic. In recent years, the country has made strides in combating HIV/AIDS, with efforts being made to provide proper treatment and lower the rate of mother-to-child transmission.

Education

University of Botswana, Central campus

University of Botswana Library

Botswana has made educational progress since independence in 1966 when there were only 22 university graduates in the country and only a very small percentage of the population attended secondary school.

In January 2006, Botswana announced the reintroduction of school fees after two decades of free state education, though the government still provides full scholarships with living expenses to any Botswana citizen in university, either at the University of Botswana or, if the student wishes to pursue an education in any field not offered locally, they are provided with a full scholarship to study abroad.

Culture

Botswana's music is mostly vocal and performed, sometimes without drums depending on the occasion; it also makes heavy use of string instruments. Botswana folk music has instruments such as setinkane (a sort of miniature piano), segankure/segaba (a Motswana version of the Chinese instrument erhu), moropa (meropa for plural) and phala (a whistle used mostly during celebrations). The hands are sometimes used as musical instruments too, by either clapping them together or against {{#invoke:Lang|transl}} (goat skin turned inside out wrapped around the calf area, only used by men) to create music and rhythm.

traditional basket

In the northern part of Botswana, women in the villages of Etsha and Gumare are noted for their skill at crafting baskets from mokola palm and local dyes. The baskets are generally woven into three types: large, lidded baskets used for storage; large, open baskets for carrying objects on the head or for winnowing threshed grain; and smaller plates for winnowing pounded grain. These baskets steadily use colour.

At the Tsodilo Hills site in Botswana there is one of the highest concentrations of rock art in the world, classified as a World Heritage site by UNESCO. The oldest paintings from both Botswana and South Africa depict hunting, animal and human figures, and were made by the Khoisan (Kung San/Bushmen) over 20,000 years ago within the Kalahari Desert.

Cuisine

The national dish is seswaa, pounded meat made from goat meat or beef, or Segwapa dried, cured meat ranging from beef to game meats, either fillets of meat cut into strips following the grain of the muscle, or flat pieces sliced across the grain. Botswana's cuisine shares some characteristics with other cuisine of southern Africa.

Examples of Botswana food are: bogobe, pap (maize porridge), boerewors, samp, Magwinya and mopane worms. Bogobe is made by putting sorghum, maize or millet flour into boiling water, stirring it into a soft paste, and cooking it slowly. A dish called ting is made when milk and sugar is added to fermented sorghum or maize. Ting without the milk and sugar is sometimes eaten with meat or vegetables for lunch or dinner. Another way of making bogobe is to add sour milk and a cooking melon (lerotse). The Kalanga tribe calls this dish tophi. Madila is a traditional fermented milk product similar to yogurt or sour cream.

Sports

Obed Itani Chilume Stadium

Football is the most popular sport in Botswana. Other popular sports are softball, cricket, tennis, rugby, badminton, handball, golf, and track and field. Botswana is an associate member of the International Cricket Council. Botswana became a member of the International Badminton Federation and Africa Badminton Federation in 1991. The Botswana Golf Union has an amateur golf league in which golfers compete in tournaments and championships. Runner Nijel Amos won Botswana its first Olympic medal in 2012, taking silver in the 800 metres.

In 2011, Amantle Montsho became world champion in the 400 metres and won Botswana's first athletics medal at the world level. High jumper Kabelo Kgosiemang is a three-time African champion. Isaac Makwala is a sprinter who specializes in the 400 metres who was the gold medalist at the Commonwealth Games in 2018. Baboloki Thebe was a silver medalist in the 200 metres at the 2014 Summer Youth Olympics and reached the semi-finals at the 2014 World Junior Championships in Athletics. Ross Branch Ross, a motor-biker, holds the number one place in the South African Cross Country Championship and has competed at the Dakar Rally. Letsile Tebogo set the world junior record in the 100 metres with a time of 9.94 at the 2022 World Athletics Championships. On August 7, 2021, Botswana won the bronze medal in the Men's 4 × 400 metres relay at the Olympics in Tokyo. On August 8, 2024, Letsile Tebogo won Botswana's first-ever Olympic gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics after finishing in first place in the men's 200m final, finishing with a time of 19.46 seconds.

Botswana was the first African nation to host the Netball World Youth Cup.

The card game bridge has a strong following; it was first played in Botswana around 40 years ago, and it grew in popularity during the 1980s. Many British expatriate school teachers informally taught the game in Botswana's secondary schools. The Botswana Bridge Federation (BBF) was founded in 1988, and the game has remained popular.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Bolaane, Maitseo Mgadla. Batswana. Rosen Publishing Group, 1997. ISBN 978-0823920082
• Cutter, Charles H. Africa 2006. Harpers Ferry, WV: Stryker-Post Publications,2006. ISBN 1887985727
• Gailey, Harry A., Jr. History of Africa: From earliest times to 1800. Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing Company, 1999. ISBN 1575241188
• Wilmsen, Edwin N. Land Filled with Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari. University of Chicago Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0226900148

External links

All links retrieved December 18, 2025.

• Botswana country profile BBC
• Botswana African Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania
• Botswana Tourism
• Government of Botswana
• Botswana U.D. Department of State
• Botswana The World Factbook
• Botswana The Commonwealth
• University of Botswana
• Botswana Lonely Planet

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