Post -independence changes

1. Introduction
 On the 30th September 1966 when Botswana gained her independence she was one of the poorest
countries in the whole world.
 The situation was made worse by prolonged droughts that followed 1966.
 The British government had neglected the country for all the seventy years of its rule.
 As reported by the first president of Botswana Sir Seretse Khama to the United Nations General
Assembly in 1969, the situation was very bad.
 The president said that; "There had been practically no attempt to train Batswana to run their country.
No one secondary school was completed by the colonial government during the whole seventy years
of colonial rule ..." (Tlou and Campbell 1984)
 However, since independence the country has undergone tremendous change in rural areas.
 There are many positive changes that show the commitment of the leaders of Botswana as compared
to the colonial rulers.

2. Road construction and
networks
 Today almost all the main roads in Botswana are tarred.
Major villages and towns are linked with tarred roads.
 The cities of Gaborone, in the southern part of the country,
and Francistown in the north are linked by a tarred road.
 The same development of road networking has been done
in other parts of the country.
 The country is also linked to its neighbours with tarred
roads such as the Trans - Kalahari highway which links
Botswana with Namibia.

3. Road construction and
networks cont.http://www.lasaindia.com/details_page/ta_for_the_implementation_of_the_botswana_integrated_transport_project_bitp

4. Rural Roads Scheme
 Rural areas in Botswana were also developed through a number of
development schemes.
 Rural roads scheme has built roads to all settlements except those in some of
the remotest parts of the country.
 Some rural areas have tarred roads which link them with major villages,
towns and cities.
 Kgalagadi settlements used to be very far from the capital due to the bad
conditions of roads, but today travelling from the capital city of Botswana,
Gaborone, to most parts of the country is half a day's trip or even less.
 There are good and reliable buses and mini-buses used as public transport
and these are owned by Batswana.
 This is due to the conditions of roads which are exceptionally good.

5. Public Transport

6. Roads network
 By 1994 about 18 332 kilometres of roads were completed in Botswana.
 The central government is responsible for about 8 766 kilometres of road network while
local authorities or District Councils are responsible for 9 566 kilometres.
 The government of Botswana continues to construct more roads as good roads impact
on the country's productivity in all sectors of the economy.
 Good roads are also integral to Botswana's regional and international competitiveness
as it is a land locked country.
 Botswana also serves as an important transit route for goods from South Africa to
Northern countries such as Zambia and Zimbabwe and the West to Namibia.
 A number of good roads have been recently opened to road users such as Serowe,
Shoshong Road which covers 106 kilometres, Rakops-Motopi which covers 50 km,
Tsabong-Bokspits which covers 250 km, Palapye-Martins Drift which covers 80 km,
Mahalapye-Sherwood which covers 123 km and many others

7. Civil aviation
 There has been a great development in civil aviation since the 1980'.
 When Sir Seretse Khama Airport opened in 1985 there were only four airlines
operating scheduled service to Botswana and seventy-nine aircrafts registered
in Botswana.
 There are now five major airports in Botswana mainly Sir Seretse Khama
Airport in Gaborone, Maun Airport, Kasane and Francistown Airports. In
addition to airports there are 108 airfields, 18 governments owned and 90
privately owned.
 Air Botswana is running scheduled services to four of the major airports,
except Selibe Phikwe where scheduled services have been discontinued.
 Kalahari Air Services provides scheduled services to Ghanzi International air
services are provided by Air Botswana and other foreign airlines especially
South African Airways and privately charted aircrafts.

8. Air Botswana
http://www.pbase.com/aviationimagesrf/image/76370295

9. Botswana Railways
 Botswana's other transport mode is the train which is operated by Botswana Railways. The railway
route covers nearly 900 kilometres comprising 640 kilometres of the main line between Ramatlabama
in the South and Kakaranga in the North.
 There are 260 kilometres of branch lines that include Serule-Selibe Phikwe; Palapye-Morupule and
Francistown-Sua Pan to serve copper-nickel, coal and soda ash mines respectively.
 Botswana Railways, which until 1987 was the National Railways of Zimbabwe, today forms a very
important link in the regional railway systems of Southern Africa.
 Through link with Spoornet (RSA) in the South and National Railways of Zimbabwe.
 (NRZ) in the North, Botswana Railways provides a connection to Namibia,Mozambique and Swaziland
in the South and an unbroken rail link to Zambia, Zaire, Angola, Northern Mozambique, Tanzania and
Malawi in the North.
 In 1992 and 1993Botswana Railways carried more than a million tonnes of drought relief supplies for
the region.

10. Botswana Train
https://www.themidweeksun.co.bw/news/article.php?article=478

11. Media Communications
 There are a number of media communications in Botswana that have been
established overtime since independence.
 There is the Botswana Press Agency (BOPA), which is an integral part of the
Department of Information and Broadcasting which was formed in 1998.
 This came up as the merger of the Department of Information Services and
Radio Botswana.
 Today there are two major departments concerned with gathering, editing and
disseminating information to the public.
 These are department of Information and that of broadcasting.
 The department of information is solely concerned with government print or
newspapers such as Daily News and Kutlwano.

12. Radio and Television
 There is also the Department of Broadcasting which is responsible for the
national radio and television.
 The nation depends on Radio Botswana which broadcasts programmes on
cultural themes and music in various forms.
 Most of the programmes are designed to be educative, informative as well as
entertaining.
 Through Radio Botswana the nation also receives daily news bulletins in both
Setswana and English.
 Radio Botswana has RBI and RB 2 channels. Topical national issues are
handled by RB1 while RB 2 serves as a commercial channel.
 RB 2 caters for a young audience and business people while RB1 is an
across age channel, only that it is more popular with the adults than the
young.

13. http://www.weekendpost.co.bw/wp-news-details.php?nid=701

14. Private Radio Station
 There are also a number of private Radio stations that
include Gabz FM and Yarona FM.
 The Private Radio Stations come up with their own
programmes.
 They are commercial radio stations and generate their
revenue mostly by advertising.

15. Botswana Daily News
 The Daily News is published and given freely to
members of public every weekday; that is from Monday
to Friday.
 The Daily News publishers local and international news
items, weekly commentaries, local and foreign feature
articles, sports news, advertisements and many others.
 The paper is published mainly in English with some
articles written in Setswana languages.

16. Kutlwano Magazine
 Kutlwano Magazine was first published in 1962.
 The Magazine has both English and Setswana articles which promote
Batswana culture and traditions.
 It also talks of emerging issues that cut across ages such as
HIV/AIDS and other social ills.
 Columns such as Mmamalome have been developed over time to
address particular problems that may prevail in the Society.
 Kutlwano also fostered young writers in its short story and poetry
sections through which readers could submit their fiction to the
magazine and receive a small monetary prize.
 In addition to the government print newspaper and magazine
mentioned above is the private press.

17. Private Press
 These include private weekly and daily newspapers
such as Mmegi, Mid-Week Sun, the Gazette and many
others.
 Private press was developed in the 1980s and proved
to be more critical in their writings than the government
press.
 They publish articles on both local and international
issues and expose how people are affected by social,
economic and political developments.

18. Telecommunication
 Furthermore, the whole country, except very isolated
small settlements is linked together with a reliable
telecommunication system.
 Although in some rural areas people cannot connect
personal telephones to their homes, at least there are
public telephones.

19. Telecommunication cont.

20. Education
 At the time of independence there was no single school - whether primary or secondary
built by the colonial rulers' administration.
 Only children from rich families were educated in South African schools.
 However, the picture that we see today is totally different from the one we saw at the
time of independence in 1966.
 Several new primary and secondary schools have been built. Primary school fees were
abolished or stopped in 1980.
 During this period only few primary school leavers could find entry into secondary
education.
 This forced the government of Botswana to increase the number of Community Junior
Secondary Schools and further abolish secondary school fees in 1988.
 Today all primary school leavers are able to continue with their secondary school up to
senior secondary level for free.

21. Education cont.
 This has been proved by a high number of enrolments
at the University making it difficult for all the graduates
to be employed.
 The government has, however, found it crucial to share
some educational costs with parents who can afford it.
 This is because the Ministry of Education runs out of
funds before it could do other important things yet it
gets the largest share of the national budget at the start
of every financial year.

22. University of Botswana
www.ub.com

23. Health
 Before independence, health services were mainly provided by the missionaries like Dr. David
Livingstone.
 There were no clinics or health centres in rural areas.
 However, after independence the government of Botswana took over most health care activities.
 The government built a total of five (5) Institutes of Health Sciences three (3) schools of nursing to
train nurses.
 Free scholarships were given to Batswana students who wanted to study medicine and health centres
were built in almost all rural areas.
 In settlements where health centres have not been built services are taken to people by mobile clinics.
 All these show progressive changes done by the government of Botswana.
 Today we have two big referral hospitals in the cities of Gaborone and Francistown, an increased
number of both clinics and other hospitals.

24. Sekgoma Memorial Hospital

25. Agriculture
 Although the agricultural sector has developed slowly compared to
other sectors, there are efforts that the government has made.
 One problem which was faced by the subsistence farmers was lack
of market for their crops.
 In order to address this problem the government of Botswana
established the Botswana Agricultural Marketing Board (BAMB) in
1974.
 BAMB buys crops from Botswana at reasonable prices and sells
them back to farmers during times of need such as drought seasons
or during ploughing seasons.
 The government of Botswana also introduced another scheme to help
poor and small farmers in 1979 called Arable Land Development
Programme (ALDEP).

26. Agriculture cont.
 The main aims of ALDEP included:
 Increase in food production to enable the country to become
self-sufficient
 Create jobs so as to prevent the rural-urban migration
 Improvement of incomes especially of small farmers.
 ALDEP was aimed at helping small farmers who cultivated
less than ten hectares of land, most of whom lacked funds,
draught animals and other ploughing implements.
 Through ALDEP farmers' output were greatly increased

27. Financial Schemes.
 Small Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMME) was
introduced to help small stock farmers financially.
 It proved a failure due to poor management of funds and
resources - SMME also collapsed due to droughts that
followed after its implementation.
 With the termination of drought relief programmes such as
ALDEP, SMME, ARAP, FAP and others; the government
introduced Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency
(CEDA), to address short comings of the collapsed
programmes.
 This programme finances all forms of business ventures
including agricultural ones.

28. Financial Schemes cont.
 CEDA is a money lending agency and is administered by the
National Development Bank (NDB) and focuses on the
promotion of citizen-owned businesses through:
 provision of finance (giving loans) to start or expand a
business.
 monitoring or close supervision of the financed business
providing management skills to entrepreneurs.
 sharing of risks in case of business failure.
 The scheme is available to start businesses, expansion of
existing businesses and for purchasing shares in foreign
owned businesses.

29. Provision of clean water
 An attempt to distribute and avail clean water to all people including
those in rural areas started long before independence.
 After independence, however, the new government speeded up the
process.
 Many dams have since been built in different parts of the country and
in some instances dams have been upgraded or improved to increase
the amount of surface water they can hold.
 Recently one of the biggest dams in the country, Letsibogo near
Mmadinare has been completed.
 From Letsibogo, water is transported to other areas like Palapye,
Mahalapye up to Gaborone through the North-South Water Carrier
Project.

30. The north-south water carrier
project
 The North-South carrier Water Project is a water transfer system
aimed mainly to bring water to South East of Botswana, in
particular the Gaborone cluster.
 The scheme would also provide water to areas around
Mmadinare, Selibe Phikwe, Palapye and Mahalapye during the
first phase of its implementation.
 This phase is estimated to supply enough water until 2010, after
which Phase II or other alternative sources should be introduced.
 The transfer pipeline and associated works such as pumping
stations, water treatment works and break pressure tanks were all
completed in the first phase.

31. The north-south water carrier
project
http://www.wbho.co.za/wp-content/plugins/category-grid-view-gallery/includes/CatGridPost.php?ID=2384

32. Water supply
 In the other rural areas small dams have been
constructed and boreholes have been drilled to supply
areas which have been experiencing water shortage.
 In general, today it is possible for individuals to
connect water taps into their yards, something that was
not possible before independence.
 Even in rural areas where people use public stand
water pipes they travel shorter distances unlike before.

33. Gaborone Dam
http://www.dailynews.gov.bw/news-details.php?nid=1337

34. Conclusion
 It is proper to argue that the government of Botswana has,
immediately after independence done a lot to improve the
situation from what it was before independence.
 People's living standards have improved and poverty which
characterised rural areas was tremendously reduced.
 Today, Botswana, which was one of the poorest countries at
independence, is classified by the United Nations as a
Middle Income Country.
 This means that Botswana's economic status places it
better than a lot of countries in Africa and other developing
countries elsewhere.