57 Fun Facts About Botswana

What is the capital and largest city of Botswana?

Gaborone was laid out in the 1960s for about 20,000 people, a new capital for a territory that had always been governed from across the border; by the 2022 census it held more than ten times that.

Botho, the Setswana word for humanity, names the same philosophy as which better-known African term?

Ubuntu and botho are the same Bantu word for humanity in different languages; the Nguni form is the one that travelled, even giving a Linux operating system its name.

In Botswana, what does the everyday Setswana word 'dumela' mean?

Hello: dumela greets one person and dumelang a group, with rra added for a man or mma for a woman; Sesotho shares the word, so the same greeting also works in Lesotho and parts of South Africa.

Botswana's currency, the pula, takes its name from the Setswana word for what?

Rain is so precious in the Kalahari that pula also means "blessing"; the sub-unit thebe means "shield".

On Botswana's flag, the black stripe edged in white stands for what?

Racial harmony: the black band between two white ones stood for a society with equal chances for all, a pointed message in 1966, when white-minority rule was in force just across the border.

Day trips from Kasane, in northern Botswana, visit which natural wonder?

Victoria Falls is a short drive across the border from Kasane; it was beside this stretch of the Chobe River that Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton married for the second time in 1975.

Under what name was Botswana a British protectorate from 1885 until independence?

Bechuanaland. Britain declared the protectorate in 1885 to stop German South West Africa linking up with the Boer Transvaal and closing its road north.

Whose engagement ring, unveiled in 2017, is set with a large centre diamond from Botswana?

Meghan Markle. Prince Harry designed the ring himself, setting a diamond from Botswana, a country he had visited since childhood, between two stones from Princess Diana's collection.

Seretse Khama's 1948 marriage to Englishwoman Ruth Williams drew objections from which government, leading Britain to exile him?

Apartheid South Africa would not accept a black chief with a white wife on its border, and Britain, which needed its gold and uranium, banished Seretse from his homeland.

Which 2016 film starring David Oyelowo dramatised the marriage of Seretse and Ruth Khama?

A United Kingdom. The real couple were let home in 1956 only as private citizens, after Seretse gave up his claim to the chieftaincy; ten years later he was Botswana's first president.

Botswana is often called Africa's longest what?

Uninterrupted democracy: Botswana has held multiparty elections without a break since 1965, and when the ruling party finally lost in 2024 its president phoned his rival to concede.

In 2024 Duma Boko became the first president from outside which party, in power since independence?

Botswana Democratic Party. Founded by Seretse Khama in 1962, it had won every election since independence, but in 2024 it was left with just four seats.

The Okavango Delta is unusual among the world's great deltas because it does what?

Never reaches the sea: the Okavango River fans out across the Kalahari sands, where nearly all of its water evaporates or is taken up by plants.

In 2014 the Okavango Delta earned what milestone on UNESCO's World Heritage List?

It became the 1,000th site inscribed, at a meeting in Doha. UNESCO singled out one quirk: the delta's flood arrives in the dry season, and its plants and animals time their lives to it.

Chobe National Park in Botswana is best known for its huge population of which animal?

African elephants: tens of thousands live in Chobe, and in the dry winter months hundreds at a time gather on the banks of the Chobe River to drink.

Botswana's Makgadikgadi Pan, one of the largest salt-flat complexes on Earth, is the remnant of what?

An ancient lake: Lake Makgadikgadi dried up thousands of years ago, yet in a wet season its salt pans still flood into shallows that draw thousands of flamingos.

The Tsodilo Hills, with over 4,500 rock paintings, are nicknamed what?

The Louvre of the Desert: people living nearby still treat the hills as a place of worship visited by ancestral spirits.

Which Botswana mine, opened in 1982, is the richest diamond mine in the world by value?

Jwaneng, nicknamed the Prince of Mines, yields gems that helped lift Botswana from one of the poorest countries on earth to one of Africa's wealthiest.

Debswana is a 50-50 venture between Botswana's government and which diamond company?

De Beers. Its geologists found diamonds at Orapa in 1967, when newly independent Botswana was one of the poorest countries in Africa.

Which sprinter won Botswana's first Olympic gold medal, in the 200 m at Paris 2024?

Letsile Tebogo ran an African record of 19.46 seconds, then held his spikes up to the cameras: they carried the birth date of his mother, who had died that May.

Botswana's first Olympic medal of any colour came in 2012 when Nijel Amos took silver in which event?

800 m. Amos, then 18, chased David Rudisha home in a world-record final; in 2023, banned for three years for doping, he said he would sell the medal to support his family.

Mpule Kwelagobe of Botswana, aged 19, won which global beauty title in 1999?

Miss Universe. It was the first time Botswana had even entered, and Kwelagobe became the first black African woman to take the crown.

Botswana's national football team is nicknamed what?

The Zebras, long rated as minnows, stunned African football in 2011 by becoming the very first team to qualify for the next Africa Cup of Nations, their debut at the finals.

Seswaa, a celebration dish in Botswana, is what?

Pounded boiled beef or goat: the meat simmers in salted water in a three-legged pot, then it is pounded to shreds, a job done mainly by men.

In Botswana, what is a kgotla?

A village assembly and traditional court: the chief presides in the open air and matters are settled by consensus, though for generations only adult men were allowed to speak.

Which Alexander McCall Smith novel introduced Mma Precious Ramotswe of Botswana?

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Its Scottish author knew the country from the inside: a law professor, he taught at the University of Botswana and wrote a book on its criminal law.

Which people were controversially evicted from Botswana's Central Kalahari Game Reserve?

The San (Bushmen) took the government to court, trekked overland to hear the verdict in Lobatse, and in 2006 the judges ruled their removal unlawful and unconstitutional.

Which two languages are Botswana's official language and its national lingua franca?

English and Setswana: English is the language of government and higher education, but only a sliver of people speak it at home, where Setswana dominates.

Botswana's name literally means what?

Land of the Tswana: Setswana changes the front of a word, so Bo- marks the country, Ba- its people, Se- the language and Mo- one person, which is why a single citizen is a Motswana.

Botswana is roughly the size of which European country?

France: Botswana covers about 582,000 square kilometres, a little more than mainland France, yet only about 2.4 million people live there, making it one of the emptiest countries on Earth.

What prompted Botswana to form its first army, the Defence Force, in 1977?

Rhodesian and South African raids: troops chasing guerrillas kept crossing the border, and within a year a Rhodesian ambush had killed 15 soldiers of the new force.

Ian Khama, president 2008-2018, fell out with successor Mokgweetsi Masisi over lifting a ban on what?

Elephant hunting: Khama banned it in 2014 and Masisi lifted the ban five years later, saying the world's largest elephant population was wrecking farmers' crops; Khama called picking him a mistake.

The 2021 Kazungula Bridge linking Botswana and Zambia curves to avoid the borders of which two countries?

Zimbabwe and Namibia: Botswana and Zambia touch only along a sliver of the Zambezi squeezed between those two neighbours, so the bridge bends to stay inside the gap.

Which Botswana city, the second largest, grew up around southern Africa's first gold rush in the 1860s?

Francistown is named after Daniel Francis, a British prospector licensed here in 1869, though local miners had dug gold along the Tati long before any European arrived.

In 1895 three Tswana kings kept a chartered company out but gave it land for what?

A railway. The kings sailed to England to protest in person and their lands stayed under the Crown, but the bargain cost them a strip of country for the company's line north.

In November 2021, scientists in Botswana were the first in the world to identify which COVID-19 variant?

Omicron. A Botswana-Harvard laboratory set up for AIDS research was stunned by its number of mutations and raised the alarm, and the world answered within days with travel bans on southern Africa.

In 2021 the WHO certified Botswana as the first high-HIV country on track to eliminate what?

Mother-to-child transmission: untreated, up to 45 percent of mothers with HIV pass it to their babies, but Botswana, which began treating pregnant women in 1999, has cut that to under 5 percent.

Visitors to the Okavango Delta often glide through its channels in a mokoro, which is what?

A dugout canoe: the delta is so shallow that a mokoro needs no paddle, and the guide stands at the stern and pushes off the bottom with a long pole, as on a punt.

Which of the globe's great imaginary lines cuts across Botswana, leaving most of the country inside the tropics?

The Tropic of Capricorn: Botswana lies largely in the tropics, yet it is dry, high country, a gently rolling sandy tableland roughly a kilometre above sea level.

The pula replaced which currency one for one when Botswana launched it in 1976?

The South African rand had been Botswana's money since independence; people were given 100 days to swap their notes at a guaranteed one-for-one rate, and launch day is still called Pula Day.

Which TV show's 2007 special sent its three hosts across Botswana's Makgadikgadi salt pans in cheap second-hand cars?

Top Gear. All three bangers, bought for under £1,500 each, made it across the pans, but conservationists accused the show of leaving tyre scars on the pans that could last for decades.

Which river forms part of Botswana's south-eastern border with South Africa?

Limpopo. Vasco da Gama, anchoring off its mouth in 1498, named it the River of the Holy Spirit, and Kipling later made it the 'great grey-green, greasy Limpopo' of the Just So Stories.

A 2,492-carat diamond unearthed in Botswana in 2024 was the largest found since which famous stone of 1905?

The Cullinan, at 3,106 carats, was cut into gems for the British Crown Jewels; the Botswana stone was picked out by X-ray scanners at the Karowe mine, which has yielded several of the biggest diamonds ever found.

Bogwera and bojale are what in Tswana tradition?

Coming-of-age initiation rites for boys and girls: bogwera, the boys' school, began with circumcision and months in the wild learning to herd and fight; today the rites survive in only a few areas.

Which baobab-studded granite outcrop rises from Botswana's Makgadikgadi salt pans?

Kubu Island is a national monument and a sacred site, looked after by a trust of local villagers who run its only campsite; low stone walls from an old settlement still line the rock.

The Okavango Delta's yearly flood starts in the highlands of which country?

Angola. The Okavango rises on its Bié Plateau, and the summer rains that fall there arrive as a flood only in midwinter, at the height of Botswana's dry season.

Researchers in Botswana's Okavango Delta found that packs of which predator vote on moving off by sneezing?

African wild dogs. The more sneezes at a rally, the likelier the pack sets off: three are enough when a dominant dog calls the rally, but a low-ranking dog needs about ten.

Botswana's first satellite, BOTSAT-1, reached orbit in 2025 aboard whose rocket?

SpaceX carried BOTSAT-1 up on a shared Falcon 9 flight; built with a Botswana university, the small satellite reads the ground in fine bands of colour to tell farmers and miners what the soil holds.

The polite Setswana title Mma, used for senior women in Botswana, literally means what?

Mother. It is why the heroine of the best-selling novels set in Botswana is always Mma Ramotswe; a senior man is Rra, literally father.

Which card game has its own national federation in Botswana, founded in 1988?

Bridge. The federation set out to make Botswana one of the region's best bridge countries by running clinics in schools and getting large numbers of pupils playing.

Which coalition won Botswana's 2024 general election, ending the ruling party's unbroken run since 1965?

Umbrella for Democratic Change: its leader, the human-rights lawyer Duma Boko, had lost his own seat in parliament at the election before, yet five years later he was sworn in as president.

In 2019 Botswana's High Court struck down a colonial-era law against what?

Same-sex relationships: a student brought the case, arguing that society had changed, and three judges agreed unanimously, one adding that sexual orientation is not a fashion statement.

Who became president of Botswana on the death of its first president in 1980?

Quett Masire had been deputy since before independence; he led for 18 years, then stepped down of his own accord in 1998.

Which Grammy-winning American singer played Mma Ramotswe in the 2008 TV drama shot entirely in Botswana?

Jill Scott. The opening film, the first BBC drama shot entirely in Botswana, was directed by Oscar-winner Anthony Minghella, who died five days before it was broadcast.

In Botswana, who or what is a kgosi?

A traditional chief: a kgosi inherits the title, and today dikgosi still hear customary cases and sit in a national House of Chiefs that advises parliament on tribal law.

Seretse Khama met Ruth Williams in London in 1947 while he was studying to become what?

A barrister. He was reading for the Bar at the Inner Temple; within a year of their wedding his people had acclaimed him as their leader with Ruth beside him, and Britain then barred him from his homeland.

Who served as president of Botswana from 1998 to 2008?

Festus Mogae, an economist, left office after exactly ten years, and within months had won a $5 million prize for good governance in Africa; in office he had led an unusually open response to the country's AIDS crisis.