Botswana
Botswana (officially Republic of Botswana) is a country in Southern Africa, with its capital at Gaborone, and is home to roughly 2.5M people.
Its official languages are English, Tswana; the currency in circulation is Botswana pula (P); people from here are called Motswana.
- »The Okavango Delta is one of the very few large river deltas that never reaches the sea, emptying instead into the Kalahari.
- »Roughly a fifth of the country is set aside for wildlife.
Botswana straddles the Tropic of Capricorn.
Botswana touches four neighbours: Namibia to the west, South Africa to the south, Zambia to the northeast and Zimbabwe to the northeast. Directions run from one centre to the other.
Gaborone was built almost from nothing in the mid-1960s for independence, because the colony had been administered from Mafikeng, a town outside its own borders in South Africa.
581,016 km² (224,331 sq mi), 46th largest of 198 countries and territories on file, almost exactly the size of Morocco.
Population 2,521,139, 142nd of 198 on file. That averages 4.3 per km² (11 per sq mi).
The black stripe bordered in white on a light blue field stands for racial harmony; the blue is rain, precious enough that the national motto and the currency are both named for it (pula means rain).