James Baquet

The Republic of Botswana is located in southern Africa. Its neighbors are the nation of South Africa to the south, Namibia to the west and north and Zimbabwe to the northeast. Between Namibia and Zimbabwe, Botswana touches Zambia’s border for just a few hundred meters.

Botswana is another country that didn’t exist when I was a kid. It was at that time a British Protectorate called Bechuanaland, set up in 1885 to stem the encroachment of Boer freebooters from nearby republics. Bechuanaland’s name was changed to Botswana when independence was gained peacefully in 1966.

The country is named after the Tswana people, whose eight major tribes speak Tswana, a language also called Setswana. English is also an official language. Interestingly, there are more Tswana people in neighboring South Africa than in Botswana. One of the largest ethnic groups in that country, they have remained since the era when the northern part of what is now South Africa was the crown colony of British Bechuanaland. What is now Botswana was the protectorate that remained when the (southern) Bechuanaland colony was incorporated into Britain’s Cape Colony. Today, Tswana is one of South Africa’s 11 official languages.

Since independence, Botswana has had a stable democracy with consistent elections, and from 1998 until now with the lowest level of perceived corruption in Africa. Sadly, it has one of the world’s highest rates of HIV/AIDS, nearly 22 percent. About 20 percent of all adults are infected.

Approximately 70 percent of Botswana’s territory is occupied by the Kalahari Desert. One of the least-densely populated countries in the world, it has just over 2 million people. About 10 percent of them live in Gaborone, the capital and largest city. Once one of the world’s poorest countries, with a per capita GDP of around US$70 per year in the late 1960s, Botswana has experienced astonishing economic growth. The GDP per person today is about $18,825 per year. Thus, it has a high standard of living and the highest Human Development Index in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Vocabulary:

Which word above means:

1. invaders looking for wealth, like pirates

2. level of comfort

3. included in

4. amazing

5. advancing beyond proper limits

6. south of the Sahara Desert

7. regular, without interruption

8. seeming, apparent

9. Dutch South African

10. affected with disease