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BOTSWANA
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The history of Botswana does much more than cover a gap between the histories of neighbouring South Africa and Zimbabwe, Namibia, Angola, and Zambia. In prehistoric and very recent times the Kalahari thirstlands of Botswana have been central in the historical geography of the region, as the intermediate territory between the savannas of the north and east and the steppes of the south and west.
Between the 1880s and its independence in the 1960s, however, Botswana was a poor and peripheral British protectorate known as Bechuanaland. The country is named after its dominant ethnic group, the Tswana or Batswana ('Bechuana' in older variant orthography), and the national language is called Setswana (aka 'Sechuana').
Since the later 1960s Botswana has gained in international stature as a peaceful and increasingly prosperous democratic state. It has had one of the fastest growing economies in the world, rising from one of the poorest to lower-middle income level. This new prosperity has been based on the mining of diamonds and other minerals, which have built up state revenues, and on the sale of beef to Europe and the world market. There has been extensive development of educational and health facilities, in villages and traditional rural towns as well as in rapidly growing new towns. But there has also been an increasing gap between classes of new rich and new poor. .jpg "namibiacharging_crop_(Small).jpg") Images courtesy of Namibia Tourism - www.fotoseeker.com.jpg "namibiacat_img000605_(Small).jpg") Images courtesy of Namibia Tourism - www.fotoseeker.com 
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