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Botswana
Quick Overview:
Botswana borders South Africa to the south and east, Zimbabwe to the northeast and Namibia to the north. The tableland of the Kalahari Desert covers most of the country and the national parks cover an additional 17 per cent. The vast arid sandveld of the Kalahari occupies much of north, central and western Botswana. Gaborone, the capital, is situated in the southeast of the country and features an excellent National Museum with natural history and ethnological exhibitions, but it is Botswana’s national parks and game reserves that are the real attraction. The Okavango Delta area, northwards in the Kalahari Desert, is home to more than 300 exotic species and a variety of fauna. It is extremely beautiful, composed of vast grass flats, low tree-covered ridges and lagoons. The Moremi Wildlife Reserve in southern Africa, covering 1812 sq km (700 sq miles) in the northeast corner of the Okavango Delta, is spectacular. Small boats travel the delta through lagoons abundant with birdlife. Most lodges and safari camps have restaurants and licensed bars.
Geography:
The history of Botswana does much more than cover a gap between the histories of neighbouring South Africa and Zimbabwe, Namibia, Angola, and Zambia. In prehistoric and very recent times the Kalahari thirstlands of Botswana have been central in the historical geography of the region, as the intermediate territory between the savannas of the north and east and the steppes of the south and west. Between the 1880s and its independence in the 1960s, however, Botswana was a poor and peripheral British protectorate known as Bechuanaland. The country is named after its dominant ethnic group, the Tswana or Batswana ('Bechuana' in older variant orthography), and the national language is called Setswana (aka 'Sechuana'). Since the later 1960s Botswana has gained in international stature as a peaceful and increasingly prosperous democratic state. It has had one of the fastest growing economies in the world, rising from one of the poorest to lower-middle income level. This new prosperity has been based on the mining of diamonds and other minerals, which have built up state revenues, and on the sale of beef to Europe and the world market. There has been extensive development of educational and health facilities, in villages and traditional rural towns as well as in rapidly growing new towns. But there has also been an increasing gap between classes of new rich and new poor.
Related Links:
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