Abstract:

Dating back to its independence from British ‘protection’ in 1966, Botswana’s economy has been largely based on beef production and in the 1980s, the mining and export of diamonds. Whereas the country remains one of the few brawny economies in Africa, the twin challenges of overreliance on primary economic activities and a sparse population base have become a real development bane. While the former has by now shown calamitous economic consequences as a result of foot and mouth disease and the drop-in world diamond prices, the latter is difficult to contemplate in development outlay. Faced with these reality checks the successive governments of Botswana have, with varied successes (or lack of), embarked on economic diversification overdrive and robust population policies. This paper reconnoiters the importance of economic diversification in primary-resource dependent Third World economies such as Botswana. It further explores the historical background to economic diversification in Botswana and the major challenges that Botswana faces in its diversification drive. The paper also draws attention to the challenges posed by a small and dwindling population and other fundamental issues to the vision of economic diversification. The paper concludes by pointing out opportunities available for a long-term expansion of the economy of Botswana. An intensive qualitative analysis of available literature will be used to gather information on Botswana’s diversification policy. Secondary quantitative methods of data collection will largely be relied upon which involves the collection of secondary data from existing data sources like the internet, government resources, libraries and research reports. Secondary quantitative research will help to corroborate the information that is collected from primary quantitative research as well as support the strengthening or proving or disproving previously collected data. It is a major finding of this research that Botswana’s diversification policy has not been pursued with the competence it deserves and therefore has so far been a failure. It is also the finding of this paper that unless robust population policies are put in place to support diversification, this policy will remain a pipe dream.

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(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seretse_Khama

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