Botswana

Botswana is a country in Africa.

It has no sea. Most of the land is covered in sand and grass. The capital city is called Gaborone.

Botswana is in the middle of southern Africa and has no coastline. It is shaped roughly like a triangle, about 965 kilometers from north to south and the same from east to west.

Most of the country is covered by deep Kalahari sand with grass and bushes, but in the north the Okavango River spreads out into a giant wetland. Botswana is named after its largest group of people, the Tswana. About 2.6 million people lived there in 2025, and its capital is Gaborone.

Botswana is a landlocked country in the center of Southern Africa, roughly triangular, about 965 km from north to south and from east to west. Its eastern and southern borders follow rivers and an old wagon road, while the western borders are lines of longitude and latitude across the Kalahari. It takes its name from the Tswana, the dominant ethnic group.

Before independence in 1966, as the Bechuanaland Protectorate, it was one of the poorest states in the world; Britannica now describes it as a peaceful and increasingly prosperous democracy, a member of the UN, the Commonwealth, the African Union and the Southern African Development Community, whose secretariat is in Gaborone. The World Bank put the population at 2,562,122 in 2025, about 73.5 percent urban (2024).

Gaborone is the capital city.

In the Tsodilo Hills, people painted animals on the rocks long ago. In the north is the Okavango Delta, full of water and animals.

Gaborone, the capital, was founded in 1964, just before independence. It has the University of Botswana and a national museum. Francistown and Lobatse grew up along the railway, and Orapa and Jwaneng are diamond-mining towns.

In the northwest, the Tsodilo Hills hold more than 4,500 rock paintings in an area of just 10 square kilometers, so many that the site has been called the Louvre of the Desert. People have lived there for at least 100,000 years. The Okavango Delta and Tsodilo are both World Heritage Sites.

Gaborone was founded in 1964 as the new capital; until then the protectorate had been run from Mafeking (Mafikeng), outside its own borders in South Africa. Francistown (1897) and Lobatse (1902) began as railway towns, Selebi-Phikwe (1971) and Jwaneng (1979) are mining towns, and the diamond town of Orapa (1971) is jointly managed by the government and De Beers.

Tsodilo (UNESCO, 2001) preserves over 4,500 paintings in only 10 km² of the Kalahari, one of the highest concentrations of rock art in the world, and an archaeological record spanning at least 100,000 years; Britannica notes continuous Khoisan occupation of its Depression Shelter from about 17,000 BCE to about 1650 CE. The Okavango Delta (2014) covers more than 2 million hectares of largely undisturbed wetland and seasonally flooded grassland.

The Okavango River flows into Botswana.

It spreads out into lots of channels and swamps. The water never reaches the sea. In the dry middle, there are huge flat salt pans.

The Okavango River flows in from the highlands of Angola and spreads into a delta of marshes and flooded plains. Unlike most rivers, it never reaches the sea: most of its water evaporates. The flood arrives during Botswana's dry season, and animals gather to drink.

South of the delta lie the Makgadikgadi Pans, huge flat salt pans. The Kalahari is often called a thirstland rather than a true desert, because grass and bushes grow almost everywhere. Rain falls mostly in summer storms between December and March.

Botswana averages about 1,000 m in altitude and is mostly a sand-filled basin. Britannica divides it into the rocky eastern hardveld, the deep-sand Kalahari sandveld and the ancient lake beds of the north. The highest point, about 1,490 m, is in the hills north of Lobatse; the lowest, 660 m, is in the Limpopo valley.

The Okavango flows from Angola across the Caprivi Strip into its delta, where most water evaporates from about 10,000 km² of wetlands; UNESCO lists it as one of very few major interior deltas that do not reach a sea, with floods arriving in the dry season. Floodwater may reach the Boteti River and the Makgadikgadi Pans, while Lake Ngami has almost dried up. Rainfall, brought by Indian Ocean winds, averages 460 mm, from 635 mm in the northeast to under 127 mm in the southwest, and droughts of five or six years can recur every two decades.

Botswana has lots and lots of elephants.

Hippos and crocodiles live in the rivers. Lions, zebras and ostriches live in the Kalahari. Bright birds fly over the water.

About 150 kinds of mammals live in Botswana, along with more than 460 kinds of birds and more than 200 kinds of reptiles and amphibians. When the Okavango floods, large herds of elephants, buffalo, red lechwe antelope and zebras come to drink and splash.

When UNESCO listed the delta in 2014, it reported that Botswana had about 130,000 elephants, the world's largest population. The Central Kalahari Game Reserve, the country's biggest reserve, is home to lions, jackals, ostriches, springboks and zebras. Hippos, crocodiles and colorful bee-eaters can be seen in Chobe National Park.

Britannica counts about 150 mammal species in Botswana (including 30 bats, 27 rodents and more than 30 large mammals), more than 460 bird species and over 200 described reptiles and amphibians; tigerfish, tilapia and catfish live in the northern rivers. Reserves include the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, the largest, Chobe National Park, the Makgadikgadi Pans Game Reserve and the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, managed jointly with South Africa.

UNESCO describes the Okavango as home to some of the world's most endangered large mammals, including the cheetah, white and black rhinoceroses, African wild dog and lion. At inscription in 2014 it noted that Botswana supported the world's largest elephant population, around 130,000, with the delta as the core area for the species' survival, and that elephant numbers were rising while other species were declining.

About 2.6 million people live in Botswana.

Many people speak Setswana. Many families keep cattle. People grow sorghum, millet and corn.

All the people of Botswana are called Batswana, whatever their background. About two-thirds are Tswana, and there are also Kalanga, Kgalagadi, Herero, Mbukushu, Yei, San and other groups. Setswana is the national language and English is the official language.

Botswana is known as cattle country, and its beef is sold abroad. Families grow sorghum, millet and corn, though dry years can ruin harvests. Villages are often built around a kgotla, a meeting courtyard, and a cattle corral.

Batswana (singular Motswana) is the name for all citizens. Tswana identity, dating from eight Tswana states of the 19th century, covers about two-thirds of the population; other groups include the Kalanga, Kgalagadi, Yei, Mbukushu, Herero and Mbanderu, and Khoisan communities in the southwest. Setswana is the national language and English the official one; Khoe and San languages, Kalanga, Herero and others are also spoken. More than half the population is Christian, mostly in independent churches.

People and cattle are concentrated along the eastern hardveld hills and the northern rivers. Villages are still laid out around the kgotla (court) and cattle kraal of traditional leaders, though brick walls and metal roofs have replaced clay and thatch. Grain (sorghum, millet and corn) has rarely met national needs, while beef cattle remain central, with the European Union as the main export market. More than a quarter of people are under 15.