Botswana

• 1. Introduction

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  Botswana is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, and about 70% of its territory lies inside the Kalahari Desert. The terrain is flat. South Africa borders it to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west and north, Zambia to the north, and Zimbabwe to the northeast.

  The country covers an area comparable to France, yet it holds only slightly over 2.4 million people. That makes it one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. Its full name is the Republic of Botswana.

  Such a thinly settled land might seem an unlikely success story. Yet Botswana holds the second-highest Human Development Index of continental sub-Saharan Africa, behind only South Africa. How did a desert nation with so few people reach that position? What did its people live through before they got there? And who has been left behind along the way?

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• 2. Names And Traditions

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  The name Botswana means Land of the Tswana, and the grammar behind it works like a small map of the country. Setswana is a Bantu language, so its noun classes are marked by prefixes. Bo refers to the country. Ba refers to the people. Mo means one person, and Se means the language. The Tswana give the land its name, the Batswana are the people together, and a single citizen is a Motswana. The word Batswana was first applied only to the Tswana. It has since become the general term for every citizen.

  English is the official language, although Setswana is spoken widely across the country. Other languages include Kalanga, Sarwa, Ndebele, Kgalagadi, Tswapong, !Xóõ and Yeyi. Afrikaans is heard in some parts.

  The Constitution of Botswana recognises a homogeneous Tswana state, and the country is de facto the nation state of the Batswana. No statute enshrines that idea, however. By the figures for 2024, the Tswana make up about 79% of the population. The Kalanga account for 11%, and the law does not distinguish them, though they are the largest ethnic minority. The San, also called the Basarwa, make up 3%. The remaining 7% includes White and European Batswana, Indians and several smaller Southern African groups.

  Native groups also include the Bayei, Bambukushu, Basubia, Baherero and Bakgalagadi. The Indian minority includes recent migrants and descendants of earlier migrants from Mozambique, Kenya, Tanzania, Mauritius and South Africa. Since 2000, deteriorating economic conditions in Zimbabwe have pushed the number of Zimbabweans living in Botswana into the tens of thousands.

  An estimated 77% of citizens identify as Christians, mostly Anglicans, Methodists and members of the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa. About 20% follow no religion. The 2001 census counted around 5,000 Muslims, 3,000 Hindus and 700 followers of the Baháʼí Faith.

  Seswaa, pounded goat meat or beef, is the national dish. Bogobe is a soft paste made by stirring sorghum, maize or millet flour into boiling water and cooking it slowly. Add sour milk and a cooking melon called lerotse, and the Kalanga call the dish tophi. Folk music is mostly vocal. It uses instruments such as the setinkane, a sort of miniature piano, and the phala, a whistle played at celebrations. In the villages of Etsha and Gumare, women weave baskets from mokola palm and local dyes. The national anthem, "Fatshe leno la rona", was written and composed by Kgalemang Tumediso Motsete and adopted at independence.

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• 3. Before The Tswana

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  Stone tools and animal remains show that people lived in every part of what is now Botswana at least 400,000 years ago. Hominids were there during the Pleistocene. Since the 2020s, the region has been proposed as the birthplace of all modern humans, around 200,000 years ago. Cave paintings left by modern humans are about 73,000 years old. Hunting scenes, animals and human figures painted by the Khoisan in the Kalahari are more than 20,000 years old.

  The earliest known inhabitants of southern Africa are thought to be the forebears of the San, also called Bushmen, and the Khoi. Both groups speak click languages from the small Khoe-Kwadi, Kxʼa and Tuu families. They hunted, gathered and traded over long distances. About 2,000 years ago, cattle arrived. Herding became central to the economy because the region had large grasslands free of tsetse flies.

  Bantu-speaking peoples moved in from the north, and AD 600 is the consensus estimate, although the timing is unclear. Around then, the ancestors of the Kalanga settled the northeast. These proto-Kalanga were closely tied to states in Zimbabwe and to the Mapungubwe state. The Domboshaba ruins were first occupied toward the end of the Great Zimbabwe period of 1250-1450. Their stone walls average 1.8 metres in height. Local people respect the site, and it is believed the chief lived on top of the hill with his helpers.

  The states outside today's borders appear to have kept herds approaching modern cattle density in what is now the Central District. This cattle complex prospered until around 1300 and declined after Mapungubwe collapsed. In this era the Bakgalagadi, the first Tswana-speaking groups, moved into the southern Kalahari. Trade routes ran along the Limpopo River to the Indian Ocean. Beads from Asia reached Botswana, most likely in exchange for ivory, gold and rhinoceros horn.

  At Toutswemogala Hill, radiocarbon dates run from the 7th to the late 19th century, so the settlement was occupied for more than 1,000 years. The site holds house floors, large heaps of vitrified cow dung, burials and a striking stone wall. Grain storage structures show that farming mattered alongside cattle. Around 1000 AD, the Toutswe people moved into Botswana.

  The arrival of the Tswana speakers' ancestors, who came to control the region, has not been dated precisely. The Bakwena, a chieftaincy under a leader named Kgabo II, reached the southern Kalahari by AD 1500 at the latest. They drove the Bakgalagadi west into the desert. Offshoots followed. The Bangwaketse occupied lands to the west, and the Bangwato moved northeast into former Kalanga areas. A Bangwato offshoot, the Batawana, entered the Okavango Delta, probably in the 1790s.

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• 4. Raiders Traders Missionaries

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  The first written records of the area date from 1824, and they show the Bangwaketse as the dominant power. Under their ruler Makaba II, they kept vast herds of cattle in well-protected desert areas and used their military strength to raid neighbours. Other chiefdoms had capitals of around 10,000 people and were fairly prosperous.

  That balance broke during the Mfecane, the period of 1823-1843, when waves of invaders arrived from South Africa. The Bangwaketse defeated the invading Bakololo in 1826. Over time, though, every major chiefdom was attacked, weakened and impoverished. The Bakololo and AmaNdebele raided repeatedly and seized cattle, women and children. Many Batswana fled into the desert or took refuge on hilltops and in caves. The threat faded only after 1843, when the Amandebele settled in western Zimbabwe.

  Merchants based in the Cape Colony opened trade in the 1840s and 1850s, and the chiefdoms began to rebuild. The Bakwena, Bangwaketse, Bangwato and Batawana cooperated to control the lucrative ivory trade. They spent the proceeds on horses and guns. By 1880 they had established control over the territory, subjugating the Bushmen, Kalanga, Bakgalagadi and other groups that are minorities today.

  Afrikaners who left the Cape Colony after the Great Trek settled along the Transvaal border. In 1852, a coalition of Tswana chiefdoms led by Sechele I defeated their incursions at the Battle of Dimawe. After about eight years of intermittent tension, a peace agreement came at Potchefstroom in 1860. It fixed the modern border between South Africa and Botswana, and the two peoples then traded and worked together comparatively peacefully.

  In the north, in 1884, the cavalry of the Batawana under Kgosi Moremi defeated an Ndebele invasion at the Battle of Khutiyabasadi. The victory began the collapse of the Ndebele Kingdom in Zimbabwe and strengthened Tswana-speaking authority.

  Peace let trade thrive between 1860 and 1880, and Christian missionaries took advantage. The Lutherans and the London Missionary Society were both established by 1856. By 1880, every major village had a resident missionary. Khama III, who reigned from 1875 to 1923, was the first Tswana chief to make Christianity a state religion. A great deal of customary law changed as a result. By the First World War, Christianity was the de facto official religion in every chiefdom.

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• 5. Protectorate To Republic

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  In January 1885, Britain unilaterally annexed Tswana territories and declared a protectorate named Bechuanaland. Both the German Empire and Britain had coveted the land during the Scramble for Africa. At the Berlin Conference, Britain decided to annex it to safeguard the Road to the North, which would connect the Cape Colony to British territories further north. The Warren Expedition then went north to consolidate control. The chiefs had misgivings, but they eventually accepted the fait accompli.

  In 1890, areas north of 22 degrees were added to the protectorate. During the 1890s the territory was divided into eight reserves, with only small amounts of land left as freehold for white settlers. The British government then planned to hand the protectorate to the British South Africa Company. Tswana leaders toured England in protest. The plan was finally foiled by the failure of the Jameson Raid in January 1896.

  When the Union of South Africa formed in 1910, it left out the High Commission Territories. These were the Bechuanaland Protectorate, Basutoland, now Lesotho, and Swaziland, now Eswatini. Provision was made for later incorporation, but the United Kingdom began consulting the inhabitants and kept delaying. Successive South African governments sought a transfer without success. The election of the Nationalist government in 1948 brought apartheid, and South Africa withdrew from the Commonwealth in 1961. Those events ended any prospect of incorporation.

  Government evolved slowly under British authority. In 1920, two advisory councils were established, one for Africans and one for Europeans. The African Council consisted of the eight heads of the Tswana tribes plus some elected members. Proclamations in 1934 regulated tribal rule and powers. A joint European-African advisory council followed in 1951, and the 1961 constitution created a consultative legislative council.

  In June 1964, the United Kingdom accepted proposals for democratic self-government. An independence conference met in London in February 1966. The seat of government had moved in 1965 from Mahikeng in South Africa to Gaborone, a newly established town near the South African border. Under the 1965 constitution, Botswana held its first general elections under universal suffrage and became independent on the 30th of September 1966. Sir Seretse Khama, a leader of the independence movement, was elected first president and was then re-elected twice.

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• 6. Power And Its Limits

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  When Seretse Khama died in office in 1980, the presidency passed to his vice-president, Quett Masire. Masire won in his own right in 1984, and again in 1989 and 1994, before retiring in 1998. Festus Mogae succeeded him and was elected in 1999 and 2004. Ian Khama, son of the first president, took over in 2008. He had served as Mogae's vice-president since resigning as Commander of the Botswana Defence Force in 1998. On the 1st of April 2018, Mokgweetsi Masisi was sworn in as the fifth president.

  Botswana is a parliamentary republic and the longest uninterrupted democracy in Africa. Its institutions blend the British Westminster system with the tribal governments of the Tswana. Parliament consists of the President and the National Assembly, which is the sole legislature. The Ntlo ya Dikgosi, made up of tribal chiefs and appointed members, only advises. Members of parliament choose the president, who appoints the vice-president and cabinet. Once appointed, the president holds significant power, and the legislature can do little to check it. Many cases are settled in customary courts presided over by tribal chiefs.

  Elections come every five years under the Independent Electoral Commission, and they are recognised as free and fair. Even so, the Botswana Democratic Party enjoyed institutional advantages that other parties lacked. It governed without a break from independence until 2024, a rule of 58 years. The Umbrella for Democratic Change, a coalition of opposition parties since 2019, won the 2024 general election. On the 1st of November 2024, its leader Duma Boko was sworn in as the first president not to represent the Botswana Democratic Party.

  Inside the ruling party, rivalry rarely paused. After the Kgabo Commission of 1991, factionalism dominated politics. The Barata-Phathi faction was led by Peter Mmusi, Daniel Kwelagobe and Ponatshego Kedikilwe. The A Team was led by Mompati Merafhe and Jacob Nkate. Mogae and Ian Khama aligned with the A Team, yet in 2010 Khama, by then president, effectively expelled it from the party. A new feud began in 2018, when Masisi, Khama's chosen successor, turned against him. That rivalry still looms over politics in the 2020s.

  Outside indices disagree about how healthy the democracy is. The Economist ranked Botswana 33rd of 167 states in its 2023 Democracy Index and called it a flawed democracy. That was the highest ranking in continental Africa, behind only the island nation of Mauritius. The 2024 V-Dem indices recorded democratic backsliding over ten years and placed the country in a grey zone between electoral democracy and electoral autocracy. Botswana lost its status as a liberal democracy in 2021. After the opposition victory, scores improved significantly. The report said that autocratization stopped with the 2024 general election, a historic defeat for the ruling party. The 2023 Transparency International index ranks Botswana the third-least corrupt country in Africa, just below Cape Verde and the Seychelles.

  At independence, Botswana had no armed forces. The Botswana Defence Force was formed in 1977, after Rhodesian and South African armies attacked bases of the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army and Umkhonto we Sizwe respectively. Its missions now centre on preventing poaching, preparing for disasters and supporting foreign peacekeeping. The United States is the largest single foreign contributor to its development. In 2019, Botswana signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The 2024 Global Peace Index ranks it the 50th most peaceful country.

  On the 11th of June 2019, the High Court struck down provisions that punished homosexual acts. That made Botswana one of 22 African countries that have decriminalised or legalised them. Capital punishment remains a penalty for murder, carried out by hanging. Judicial corporal punishment is also legal, and both the state and traditional tribal courts practise it. The human rights group Ditshwanelo was established in 1993.

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• 7. Diamonds And Dust

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  In the late 1960s, Botswana had a GDP per capita of about US$70 a year, which made it one of the poorest countries in the world. By 2018 the figure stood at $15,842, up from $439 in 1950. The International Monetary Fund reports that growth averaged over 9% per year from 1966 to 1999. Botswana now ranks as an upper middle-income country, with living standards around those of Mexico by one estimate.

  Botswana produces more diamonds than any other country. Debswana, the largest diamond mining company operating there, is a joint venture 50% owned by the government. Mining supplies about 40% of government revenues. A good institutional framework let the country reinvest its resource income into stable future earnings. Foreign exchange reserves passed $7 billion in 2005/2006, almost two and a half years of current imports. The country also earned the highest sovereign credit rating in Africa. In early 2009, the government announced it would try to diversify and avoid overreliance on diamonds.

  The gains were uneven. Unemployment stood at 25.4% in 2022, and youth unemployment reached 45.41% in 2023. Data from 2015/2016 estimate that 17.2% of the population is multidimensionally poor, with another 19.7% at risk.

  Fewer than 10,000 San still live their traditional hunter-gatherer way of life. Many have been forcibly relocated from their land to reservations. They were denied access to water on their land and faced arrest if they hunted, which was their primary source of food. Their lands lie in the middle of the world's richest diamond field. Since the mid-1990s the central government has been trying to move the San out, likely because of that diamond-rich region. Officially, the government denies any link to mining and says relocation protects wildlife and the ecosystem. On the reservations, people struggle to find work, and alcoholism is rampant.

  In 2010, UN Special Rapporteur James Anaya named loss of land as a major source of the problems facing indigenous people. He cited the San's eviction from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve as a special example. On the 24th of August 2018, his successor Fernand de Varennes called on Botswana "to step up efforts to recognise and protect the rights of minorities in relation to public services, land and resource use, and the use of minority languages in education and other critical areas."

  At 581,730 square kilometres, Botswana is the 48th-largest country in the world, with a mean altitude of roughly 1,000 metres. The Limpopo River Basin lies partly inside it. The Notwane River supplies the capital through the Gaborone Dam. The Chobe River meets the Zambezi at a place called Kazungula.

  Chobe National Park has the world's largest concentration of African elephants. It covers about 11,000 square kilometres and supports about 350 species of birds. Northern Botswana also holds one of the few large remaining populations of the endangered African wild dog. Botswana belongs to the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area with Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia and Angola. The agreement lets wildlife move freely between the member countries, and six wildlife dispersal areas follow historical migratory routes. In 2014, the Okavango Delta, the largest inland delta in the world, was inscribed as the 1,000th World Heritage Site.

  Drought and desertification are the two major environmental problems, and they are heavily linked. Three-quarters of the human and animal populations depend on groundwater. Less than 5% of agriculture can be sustained by rainfall, and in the other 95% of the country livestock is the main source of rural income. About 71% of the land is used for communal grazing, a major cause of soil erosion. From 1966 to 1991 the livestock population grew from 1.7 million to 5.5 million. The human population rose from 574,000 in 1971 to 1.5 million in 1995. Environmentalists report that the Okavango Delta is drying up because of grazing.

  The United Nations Development Programme backed a project in the southern community of Struizendam. It aims to draw on "indigenous knowledge and traditional land management systems", with community members leading the effort.

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• 8. A Country Of Firsts

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  In 2002, Botswana became the first country to offer anti-retroviral drugs against the AIDS epidemic. The disease hit hard. Life expectancy fell from a peak of 64.1 in 1990 to a low of 49 in 2002. Economic development spending was cut by 10% in 2002-2003 as health costs rose. In 2003 the government began a programme of free or cheap generic antiretroviral drugs, backed by an information campaign.

  Under President Festus Mogae, the government asked for outside help. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Merck Foundation together formed the African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnership. The Botswana-Harvard AIDS Institute and the Botswana-UPenn Partnership joined early. A nationwide programme cut transmission from infected mothers to their children from about 40% in 2003 to 4% in 2010. According to the 2011 UNAIDS Report, universal access to treatment, defined as 80% coverage or more, had been achieved. About 75% of adults and 98% of children living with HIV were receiving treatment. The number of people with AIDS still rose from 290,000 in 2005 to 320,000 in 2013. Life expectancy has recovered to 66.4 years as of 2024.

  On the 19th of November 2021, scientists at the Botswana Harvard HIV Reference Laboratory first discovered the variant later designated B.1.1.529 and named Omicron. That made Botswana the first country in the world to find it. The laboratory opened in 2001 as a purpose-built HIV research lab, one of the first on the continent. Since early 2021 its team had genome-sequenced some 2,300 positive samples. Dr. Gaseitsiwe said that Botswana's submissions to GISAID are among the highest in the African region per capita, on a par with South Africa.

  In 2009, the Botswana company Deaftronics launched a solar-powered hearing aid after six years of prototype development. It has sold over 10,000 units at $200 each. Each includes four rechargeable batteries lasting up to three years and a solar charger. Similar devices can start at around $600. Botswana also led a three-year programme to build Sat-1, a 3U hyperspectral Earth observation satellite, which was launched on a SpaceX rocket. The Botswana International University of Science and Technology led its development. It is meant to supply data for environmental monitoring, precision agriculture, urban planning and disaster management.

  At independence in 1966, the country had only 22 university graduates. Adult literacy rose from 69% in 1991 to 83% in 2008, and reached 88.5% in 2024. Botswana invests 21% of government spending in education. Any citizen can receive a full scholarship with living expenses to study at the University of Botswana, or abroad for fields not offered locally. The country counts 344 researchers per million inhabitants, against an average of 91 for sub-Saharan Africa in 2013.

  Amantle Montsho became world champion in the 400 metres in 2011, winning Botswana's first athletics medal at world level. In 2012, runner Nijel Amos took silver in the 800 metres for the country's first Olympic medal. The men's 4 x 400 metres relay won bronze at the Tokyo Olympics on the 7th of August 2021. Letsile Tebogo set a world junior record of 9.94 in the 100 metres at the 2022 World Athletics Championships. On the 8th of August 2024, Tebogo won Botswana's first-ever Olympic gold medal at the Paris Olympics. He took the men's 200 metres final in 19.46 seconds.

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