This week, Botswana is marking 60 years of independence from Britain with Diamond Jubilee celebrations throughout the nation. The anniversary underscores the size of the nation’s transformation. In 1966, the previous Bechuanaland Protectorate was among the many world’s poorest international locations, with barely 12 kilometres of paved highway, simply 22 college graduates and about 100 secondary-school graduates.
Six a long time later, Botswana is an upper-middle-income nation with certainly one of postcolonial Africa’s most placing growth data. Between 1965 and 1980, Botswana’s economic system grew by a median of 13.9 % a 12 months. By 2025, gross home product (GDP) per capita had reached about $7,800, larger than South Africa’s roughly $6,600, a placing reversal given South Africa’s place as one of many continent’s largest and most diversified economies. However the significance of Botswana’s development lies not solely in its scale, however in what the nation did with it.
In 1994, it turned the primary nation ever to graduate from the United Nations’ least-developed nation class. The World Financial institution now classifies Botswana as an upper-middle-income economic system, and the change is seen throughout the nation. By 2024, its highway community stretched nearly 35,000 kilometres, 80.2 % of the inhabitants had entry to electrical energy and, in accordance with the 2022 census, 66.5 % of Batswana lived in city areas, in contrast with simply 9.1 % in 1971.
Public funding additionally dramatically expanded entry to schooling. By 2022, Botswana had 192,151 secondary-school pupils, whereas by 2024 some 60,287 college students have been enrolled in tertiary establishments. A rustic that entered independence with solely 22 college graduates now educates tens of hundreds of scholars at tertiary degree.
The good points prolonged past schooling. Botswana’s nationwide poverty price fell from 30.6 % in 2002/03 to an estimated 14.5 % by 2022. Public healthcare expanded alongside this transformation. At the moment, 85 % of Batswana dwell inside 5 kilometres of a well being facility and nearly all births happen in well being amenities.
Botswana’s response to HIV is extra exceptional nonetheless. In 2002, Botswana launched Africa’s first nationwide free complete HIV therapy programme. Twenty-three years later, the World Well being Group recognised it as the primary high-HIV-burden nation on this planet to realize Gold Tier standing on the trail in the direction of eliminating mother-to-child transmission. Ninety-eight % of pregnant ladies dwelling with HIV obtain therapy, transmission to kids has fallen to about 1.2 % and life expectancy now stands at 69 years.
Political stability has additionally endured via democratic change. In 2024, after 58 years of Botswana Democratic Celebration rule, voters elected the opposition Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) and the outgoing authorities relinquished workplace peacefully.
Botswana’s achievements are more and more seen past politics and economics, too. Letsile Tebogo gained the nation’s first Olympic gold medal in Paris in 2024. A 12 months later, Collen Kebinatshipi turned world 400m champion. In Could 2026, Botswana hosted the World Athletics Relays in Gaborone, a primary for Africa, and ended the competitors by successful the lads’s 4x400m title earlier than its residence crowd.
Behind a lot of Botswana’s financial and social progress lies the way in which it has managed its diamond wealth.
At the moment, Botswana owns 50 % of Debswana, the diamond-mining three way partnership it shares with De Beers, whereas the Pula Fund, its sovereign wealth fund, preserves a part of the nation’s wealth for future generations and helps cushion the economic system towards mineral-related macroeconomic shocks. Overseas reserves equal to 7.5 months of imports present an extra layer of economic safety. The state continues to make use of mineral revenues to finance public companies, infrastructure and financial growth relatively than treating diamonds merely as an export windfall.
But for all that Botswana has achieved, it stays weak to the commodity that financed a lot of this progress. Diamonds have accounted for nearly 90 % of products exports over the previous decade and nonetheless generate a few third of nationwide income and three-quarters of foreign-exchange earnings.
Pure diamonds have confronted softer luxurious demand and rising competitors from laboratory-grown stones that promote for a fraction of the value. As world demand weakened, Botswana felt the results instantly. The economic system contracted by 2.8 % in 2024 and one other 0.7 % in 2025.
The downturn deepens Botswana’s already severe employment problem. Its newest family survey places unemployment at 21 %, rising to twenty-eight.9 % amongst folks aged 15 to 35.
Botswana largely averted the useful resource curse, but it by no means overcame its heavy reliance on diamonds. The problem at 60 is not methods to flip diamonds into growth, however methods to create prosperity that may survive with out them.
That requires trying past diamonds. Botswana’s 2025 settlement with De Beers provides the state-owned Okavango Diamond Firm 30 % of Debswana manufacturing, rising to 40 % after 2030 and doubtlessly 50 % thereafter. It additionally gives for jewelry manufacturing, diamond grading and vocational coaching. Botswana ought to seize as a lot worth as attainable from each stone it mines. However processing, sprucing and advertising diamonds is not going to finish its dependence on diamonds.
Botswana now wants a broader, extra resilient economic system, and a few of the foundations are already in place. In 2024, 68.9 % of households had web entry, up from 40.6 % a decade earlier. That connectivity has but to translate into many roles: data and communications expertise accounted for less than 2 % of employment in 2025. Botswana should put money into the talents wanted to show connectivity into software program, fintech, digital companies and expertise companies that make use of Batswana and promote past its borders.
Tourism is one other current power, already offering about 50,500 jobs, or 6.7 % of whole employment, and accounting for greater than 60 % of companies exports. A conservation mannequin that locations roughly 40 % of the nation’s land beneath protected standing provides Botswana an asset it may construct on.
Financial diversification would require ample energy. A 500MW photo voltaic plant with 500MWh of battery storage is being constructed at Maun. Low-cost, dependable renewable power may help manufacturing, knowledge centres and new industries relatively than merely gentle houses.
Botswana should additionally assist extra companies compete regionally and globally. Greater than 95 % of private-sector gross sales stay home and solely 9 % of surveyed companies export in any respect. Extra Batswana want entry to finance and coaching to allow them to begin, personal and develop companies and profit from the subsequent economic system.
The establishments that turned diamonds into roads, faculties and healthcare should now use six a long time of amassed expertise, infrastructure and capital to create a brand new economic system constructed on expertise, power, manufacturing and exports.
Botswana issues past its borders as a result of its file contrasts sharply with different resource-rich African states. In line with the World Financial institution’s newest out there knowledge, copper dominates Zambia’s exports, whereas 71.7 % of Zambians dwell on lower than $3 a day. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is wealthy in copper and cobalt, however 85.3 % of its folks stay beneath the identical threshold. In oil-rich Nigeria, Africa’s largest petroleum producer, 41.8 % of the inhabitants lives on lower than $3 a day.
Botswana demonstrates that a decisive query will not be whether or not a rustic has mineral wealth, however who controls it, how its revenues are protected and whether or not the state converts them into higher housing, stronger infrastructure, dependable public companies and larger financial safety.
That lesson is particularly essential as African international locations search larger management over essential minerals. Mineral wealth doesn’t inevitably produce corruption, battle or poverty. Success should finally be measured by whether or not these assets foster extra productive economies, widen alternative and materially enhance folks’s lives.
That’s the bigger that means of Botswana at 60: in the best fingers, postcolonial energy can serve the various relatively than the few.
There may be an previous Setswana saying: “Moenyane o pele lebone la waabo” — the one who goes forward turns into a lightweight for individuals who come after.
Could Botswana gentle the way in which for Africa.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
