https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BotswanaNoted for being one of Africa's most successful economies and a major producer of diamonds (which make up more than 60% of the value of its exports). It has gone from being one of the poorest countries in the world at independence to a middle income country. It is also (perhaps not coincidentally? But then again consider Somalia) unusually homogeneous for an African country, which about 80% of the country being Tswana in ethnicity and over 90% speaking Setswana, which is an official language in addition to English. The country, formerly the protectorate of Bechuanaland, being mainly a construct from the start for the Tswana people. Despite its good situation, it is mostly desert and is one of the least densely populated countries in the world - only just over 2 million for nearly 600,000 square kilometres. The motto of the county and the currency is
pula, which means 'rain' in Setswana, probably telling you something of the nature of the country's environment. Its capital, Gaborone, was basically built from the scratch in the 1960s and based on garden city principles. It, like the rest of the country, is on google street view.
Below is a cartogram of the world's Tswana speakers. There are far more in South Africa than in Botswana, where 4 million people speak it as their mother tongue and many more as a second language. It is the black
lingua franca of Pretoria
