Six months into Botswana’s vaccine roll-out, only 5% of the population has been vaccinated
Judy Seidman responds to Athi Mongelezi Joja’s expanded assessment of her ‘Drawn Lines’ exhibition
Choppies began life as a struggling general dealer in Botswana and now consists of about 250 stores in eight countries
For the first time in the history of one of Africa’s most stable democracies, the ruling BDP will see a genuine fight for the top job
‘The thing is, most people here grow up believing that a man should be with a woman and a woman only; that there is no other way of existing’
A study of pink plastic pearls shows that Africa will have to make big sacrifices if its children are to be employed
Botswana’s central bank will continue to try to boost economic growth by keeping its repo rate at 7.5%.
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The Botswana government is refusing to negotiate with striking civil servants who want a 16% pay hike until they return to their jobs.
Almost 100 000 public servants have been on strike in Botswana since Monday last week, in an unprecedented display of popular militancy.
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/ 23 January 2009
Botswana says reporters have nothing to fear from a new media law, but a journalism advocate calls it repressive and the official defence misleading.
Sello Motseta reports on the new opera house in Gaborone, a tribute to Alexander McCall Smith’s famous Mma Ramotswe.
Seretse Khama Ian Khama was inaugurated as Botswana’s President on Tuesday, inheriting a rare political and economic success story. Just next door, millions of Zimbabweans desperate to end economic misery anxiously awaited results of an election in which President Robert Mugabe faced the biggest challenge in 28 years of iron-fisted rule.
The new president of Botswana pledged on Tuesday that there would be no radical change in policy as he took the oath of office at a ceremony in Gaborone. A former army chief whose father was the country’s first post-independence president, Seretse Khama Ian Khama promised to uphold democracy for which his country has been known since independence.
Festus Mogae is to stand down as Botswana’s president on Tuesday after a decade in which his country cemented its status as one of Africa’s success stories despite fears it could be wiped out by HIV/Aids. Mogae, who hands over the reins of power to his long-time heir apparent Ian Khama, styled himself as the ”chief executive” of a nation of about two million.
The world’s largest producer of diamonds wants more bang for its bling. A company launched on Tuesday will market and sell about a third of Botswana’s diamonds to manufacturers who have set up cutting and polishing factories in the Southern African country.
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/ 17 January 2008
Health authorities on Wednesday reported the first known cases of virtually untreatable tuberculosis in Botswana. The Health Ministry said there were two cases of so-called extremely drug resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB, as well as 100 cases of the slightly more manageable multidrug-resistant TB, or MDR-TB.
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/ 24 November 2007
Botswana’s government denied on Friday accusations it was preventing Bushmen from returning to their ancestral lands despite a court ruling last year granting them that right. The Bushmen have accused the government of refusing to transport them back, let them hunt or supply them with water.
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/ 7 November 2007
Two of Africa’s most respected elder statesmen, Botswana’s former president Ketumile Masire and Mozambican ex-leader Joaquim Chissano, believe the continent is finally shedding its reputation as a theatre of conflict and corrupt governance.
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/ 26 October 2007
Gaborone businessman Thlomamo Patrick Dibeela has little sympathy for his Zimbabwean narrator as he listens to his tales of arrest and assault at the hands of the security services in Botswana. ”You don’t have a permit. You are a border jumper,” he tells Morris Mahlangu Lorenzo.
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/ 13 October 2007
Botswana President Festus Mogae hosted his counterparts from South Africa and Namibia at the opening on Friday of a new border crossing to allow for easier movement between the three countries. The crossing is situated in a desert area where the borders of Botswana, South Africa and Namibia meet.
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/ 6 September 2007
Its sleepy nature was an essential ingredient to the book, but tourist bosses are hoping a film version of <i>The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency</i> will provide a shot in the arm to Botswana’s laidback capital. Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella has brought a rare bustle to Gaborone since he and his crew arrived 10 weeks ago.
Good grace and fortune are smiling on the film version of <i>The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency</i>, writes Andrew Worsdale.
Hosts Botswana upset Angola to win Sunday’s Cosafa Castle Cup Group C final with a 3-1 victory on penalties following a goalless draw after 90 minutes. Goalkeeper Modiri Marumo was the hero in the shoot-out as his saves denied Angola, who played in the 2006 World Cup finals.
Botswana’s government came to the defence on Friday of the makers of Top Gear after the BBC motoring show was accused by environmentalists of damaging the famed Makgadikgadi salt pans during filming. The show had been widely criticised earlier this month for driving an assortment of vehicles across the sun-baked salt flats.
Botswana is pinning its Hollywood hopes on a new film based on the bestselling fiction series The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. In a controversial move, the government has gambled -million to promote the Southern African country’s star power to movie buffs around the globe.
South African actress, poet and television personality Lebo Mashile has won the 2006 Pan-African book prize, the Noma Award, for her first published collection of poems. Mashile’s poetry collection, In A Ribbon Of Rhythm, published in 2005, scooped the award late on Thursday in the Botswana capital, Gaborone.
Botswana, better known for its dazzling diamonds and abundant wildlife, is looking to draw in investors by showcasing its vast reserves of coal in a region facing a growing energy crisis. Delegates meet in the capital, Gaborone, this week for a government-organised conference designed to illustrate the sector’s potential.
While Botswana has succeeded in decreasing its poverty rate, it is unlikely that the country will achieve the United Nations’s fourth Millennium Development Goal of decreasing child mortality rates by two-thirds by 2015. Figures have shown an increase in child mortality between the 1990s and the 2000s.
Botswana has tightened its border controls in response to political unrest in neighbouring Zimbabwe that it fears could lead to a renewed flood of illegal migration, a senior police spokesperson said on Monday. Border officers in Botswana have been told to more carefully check those entering or seeking to remain in the Southern African nation.
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/ 19 January 2007
Botswana President Festus Mogae has met with a small number of Bushmen in an effort to persuade them not to return to their life of hunting and gathering in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Only about 100 of the 2 000 Bushmen in New Xade attended Thursday’s meeting with the president.
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/ 18 December 2006
Botswana’s government said on Monday it will not appeal a High Court ruling that hundreds of Bushmen had been wrongly evicted from ancestral hunting grounds and should be allowed to return. The president’s office said in a statement it will not initiate an appeal in the case that saw Africa’s last hunter-gatherers take on one of the continent’s most admired governments.
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/ 15 December 2006
Botswana’s government on Thursday grudgingly accepted a High Court order to allow the country’s last hunter-gatherers to live in their ancestral lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, but attached tough conditions likely to frustrate the return. The court on Wednesday said the Basarwa were wrongly forced off the land.