Botswana, formally the Republic of Botswana, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with up to 70 percent of its area being the Kalahari Desert. It is surrounded by South Africa to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west and north, and also Zimbabwe to the north-east. It is linked to Zambia throughout the brief Zambezi River surround by the Kazungula Bridge.

A country of somewhat over 2.3 million people, Botswana is just one of the most sparsely booming countries worldwide. Concerning 11.6 percent of the population stays in the resources and also largest city, Gaborone. Previously one of the globe’s poorest nations– with a GDP per capita of regarding US$ 70 per year in the late 1960s– it has actually because transformed itself into an upper-middle-income nation, with one of the globe’s fastest-growing economic situations.

Modern-day people initial lived in the country over 200,000 years earlier. The Tswana ethnic group were come down mostly from Bantu-speaking tribes that moved southward of Africa to modern Botswana around 600 ADVERTISEMENT, living in tribal enclaves as farmers and also herdsmans. In 1885, the British colonized the area and declared a protectorate under the name of Bechuanaland. As decolonisation happened, Bechuanaland became an independent Commonwealth republic under its current name on 30 September 1966. Since then, it has been a depictive republic, with a constant document of undisturbed autonomous political elections and the lowest regarded corruption position in Africa given that at least 1998.

The economic situation is controlled by mining, cattle, and also tourism. Botswana has a GDP (buying power parity) per capita of about $18,113 as of 2021, among the greatest in Africa. Botswana is the globe’s greatest ruby generating nation. Its fairly high gross national revenue per head (by some quotes the fourth-largest in Africa) offers the country a reasonably high standard of living as well as the highest possible Human Development Index of continental Sub-Saharan Africa.

Botswana belongs to the African Union, the Southern African Traditions Union, the Southerly African Advancement Area, the Commonwealth of Nations, and the United Nations. The country has actually been detrimentally influenced by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In spite of the success in programs to make therapies available, as well as to inform the population about exactly how to quit the spread of HIV/AIDS, the variety of individuals with AIDS climbed from 290,000 in 2005 to 320,000 in 2013. A20 As of 2014, Botswana has the third-highest frequency price for HIV/AIDS, with about 20% of the population infected.