Republic of Botswana: Map & History

History

Present-day Botswana was primarily forest ten million years ago. Homo erectus lived in the region during the Early Stone Age. Stone tools in present-day Botswana date back to two million years ago. Hominin migration to the Kalahari Desert, which includes Botswana, is estimated to have happened prior to 186,000 years ago. Lake Makgadikgadi began to shrink approximately 50,000 years ago. Roughly 30,000–40,000 years ago, the ancestors of the Khoe and the San lived in the region, adapting their movements to changing water and climate conditions. Rock art dates back to approximately 30,000 years ago, and permanent water sources were widely inhabited by 20,000 years ago.

Around 2,000 years ago, people introduced cattle, sheep, pottery, and agriculture.

Government and politics

Botswana is a parliamentary republic governed by the Constitution of Botswana. It is the longest uninterrupted democracy in Africa. Its seat of government is in Gaborone. Botswana's governing institutions were established after it became an independent nation in 1966. Botswana's governmental structure is based on both the United Kingdom's Westminster system and the Tswana people's tribal governments. Botswana has a centralised government in which national law supersedes local law. Local laws are developed by local councils and district councils. They are heavily influenced by tribal governments, which are led by the tribe's chief.

Economy

Since independence, Botswana has had one of the fastest growth rates in per capita income in the world. Formerly one of the world's poorest countries—with a GDP per capita of about US$70 per year in the late 1960s—Botswana has transformed itself into an upper middle-income country. GDP per capita grew from $439 in 1950 to $15,842 in 2018. Although Botswana was resource-abundant, a good institutional framework allowed the country to reinvest resource-income to generate stable future income. By one estimate, it has the fourth-highest gross national income at purchasing power parity in Africa, giving it a relatively high standard of living in Africa, around that of Mexico. As of 2022, the unemployment rate stood at 25.4%, while youth unemployment reached 45.41% in 2023.

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 phathisi (goat skin turned inside out wrapped around the calf area, only used by men) to create music and rhythm.