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Botswana


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Botswana

Land Area 566730km²
Land Area + Seaarea
Population 1639833
Population density 2.9 / km²

Informations

Botswana ( (listen), also UK: ), officially the Republic of Botswana (Setswana: Lefatshe la Botswana; Kalanga: Hango yeBotswana), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Formerly the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, Botswana adopted its name after becoming independent within the Commonwealth on 30 September 1966. Since then, it's been a representative republic, with a consistent record of uninterrupted democratic elections and the lowest perceived corruption ranking in Africa since at least 1998. It's now Africa's oldest continuous democracy. Botswana is topographically flat, with up to 70 percent of its land being the Kalahari Desert. It's bordered by South Africa to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west and north, and Zimbabwe to the northeast. Its boundary with Zambia to the north near Kazungula is poorly defined but is, at most, a couple hundred yards long.A midsize nation of just over 2.3 million people, Botswana is among the most sparsely populated countries in the world. Around 10 percent of the population lives in the capital and biggest city, Gaborone. Formerly among the poorest countries in the world--with a GDP per capita of about US$70 per year in the late 1960s--Botswana has since transformed itself into an upper middle income country, with one of the world's fastest-growing economies. The economy is dominated by mining, cattle, and tourism. Botswana boasts a GDP (purchasing power parity) per capita of about $18,825 per year as of 2015, which is among the greatest in Africa. Its high gross domestic income (by some estimates the fourth-largest in Africa) gives the country a relatively large standard of living and the greatest Human Development Index of continental Sub-Saharan Africa.Botswana is a member of the African Union, the Southern African Development Community, the Commonwealth of Nations, and the United Nations. The country has been among the hardest hit by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Despite the success in programmes to make treatments available to people infected, and to educate the people generally about how to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS, the number of individuals with AIDS rose from 290,000 in 2005 to 320,000 in 2013. As of 2014, Botswana has the third-highest prevalence rate for HIV/AIDS, with roughly 20 percent of the population infected.

Source: Wikipedia