The Economist: The Southern Star

Here's an interesting article about Botswana--a nation bordering South Africa and Zimbabwe (among others). As the article points out, the country is very unique as far as African nations go. It's the world's leading diamond producer. While it's good to learn a lot about Sierra Leone, it's also good to get a look at the context and "success" stories even though Botswana definitely isn't perfect. I'd recommend that you look into the country more because it has done some amazing things that other countries in Africa especially haven't even attempted!


Mar 27th 2008 GABORONE
From The Economist print edition

Botswana is a rare African success story but not without a few headaches.

An African president stepping down of his own accord is still depressingly rare. Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe has been clinging to power since 1980. But next door, in Botswana, a respected president, Festus Mogae, is graciously retiring this month after ten years in office.

Botswana rarely features in the news abroad. With only 1.8m people and the world's largest output of diamonds, it has been a model of stability, avoiding the violence, corruption and boom-and-bust cycles that have plagued so many mineral-rich countries. Yet it had little going for it at independence in 1966. It had only 13km (eight miles) of tarred road. Most of its people, often drought-afflicted, scraped a living rearing cattle.

Largely covered with sand, it had little agriculture—and few white settlers: it never experienced the bitterness of land dispossession and the ensuing disharmony that poisoned race relations in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya. Mr Mogae's anointed successor, Ian Khama, is half-white, but few people in Botswana think his colour matters.
Diamonds have changed the country's fortunes. Its per capita income of $5,900 is four times the regional average and higher than Malaysia's. The diamond wealth has been spent on roads, sanitation, schools and clinics, not on palaces or Swiss bank accounts. AIDS has hit the country hard, but almost 95,000 patients—86% of those who need it—get anti-retroviral treatment.

Click on title to read entire article.