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Botswana is a large, landlocked plateau country in the centre of southern Africa, bordered in the south-east by South Africa, in the west by Namibia, with Zambia and Zimbabwe to the north and north-east respectively. The country, forming a part of the Southern African Plateau, is almost entirely flat (mean elevation 1,000m above sea level), except in the southeast, where the terrain is hilly and broken.
The country is divided into three distinct regions:
• broken rocky hills in the east, covered in scrub and grass suitable for cattle ranging, with areas allowing crop farming;
• in the northwest, the Okavango Swamp;
• in the south, the tableland of the Kalahari desert, a vast sandveld with few water supplies.
The only sources of permanent surface water are the Chobe River, which marks Botswana's boundary with Namibia in the northwest; the Okavango River in the far northwest and the Limpopo River, which marks Botswana's boundary with South Africa in the southeast.
Botswana has a population of one and a half million. In 2002, the average life expectancy was just over 35 years (Source: World Fact Book 2002). The country's population is characterised as Batswana, regardless of ethnic origin. However, probably less than half are ethnic Tswana. Other main groups include the Khalagari (Kgalagadi), Ngwato, Tswapong, Birwa, and Kalanga. Scattered small groups of Khoikhoi and San still inhabit the Kalahari, where they follow a nomadic way of life and move seasonally across the Namibia border. The San people are occasionally known as 'Basarwa', a Tswana word meaning 'people of the bush' (also called bushmen). There are a few thousand whites of European extraction, most of whom arrived by way of South Africa.
Prior to independence on 30 September 1966, Botswana was the British protectorate of Bechuanaland. The Bechuanaland Protectorate was administered through the office of the high commissioner in South Africa.
The Head of State and Head of Government of the Republic of Botswana is the President, chosen by the legislative assembly for the concurrent term. The legislature, the National Assembly, has 40 elected and four nominated members. Every adult can vote. The House of Chiefs (15 members), an advisory upper chamber of parliament with limited powers, advises on tribal matters.
Seretse Khama became president when Botswana achieved independence as a Republic on 30 September 1966. Ketumile Joni Masire became acting president after the death of Seretse Khama in 1980 until 1998. Former Vice President, Festus Mogae, took over in April 1998.
Botswana is viewed internationally as an example of 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 a general lower-middle-income level. This new prosperity has been based on the mining of diamonds and other minerals, which have built up the countries revenues. It also sells beef to Europe and to 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.
Although Botswana is rich in diamonds, it has high unemployment and definite classes. In 1999 it suffered its first budget deficit in 16 years because of a slump in the international diamond market. Yet it remains one of the wealthiest as well as most stable countries on the continent.
Botswana's economic outlook remains strong but the devastation that AIDS is causing threatens to destroy the country's future. In 2001, Botswana had the highest reported rate of HIV infection in the world: 350,000 of its 1.6 million people were infected, and half the population between 25 and 29 are dying of the disease. In 2002, however, Botswana, with the help of international donors, launched an ambitious national campaign against AIDS that promises that there will be no new HIV cases after 2016, the 50th anniversary of the country's independence.