Botswana

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Overview
Thanks to its small population and an abundance of diamonds, Botswana has been able to develop into an African success story. Arid, impoverished, and lacking basic infrastructure when it gained independence from Great Britain in 1966, Botswana consistently enjoyed double-digit economic growth for more than three decades and built a democratic political system in which free and fair elections have been the only means for changing the government, which has gained a reputation as the least corrupt in Africa. Botswana is the world’s leading producer of diamonds, and African wildlife abounds in its vast game preserves, to which safari-bound people flock from around the world. Botswana has been hit hard by the HIV/AIDS crisis, and has the second highest rate of infection in the world (23.9% in 2007), yet it has responded by creating Africa’s most progressive and effective AIDS prevention and education programs. 
 
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Basic Information

Lay of the Land: Botswana is a semi-arid, subtropical, landlocked country located in Southern Africa. It is bordered by South Africa to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west, Zambia to the north, and Zimbabwe to the northeast. The flat to gently rolling terrain is dominated by the Kalahari Desert, which comprises about 70% of Botswana’s total area of 231,788 square miles, making the country slightly smaller than the state of Texas. Owing to its aridity, Botswana is one of the most sparsely populated countries in Africa, as the country’s 1.8 million people are clustered mainly in the eastern third of the country. The capital and largest city is Gaborone, the fastest growing city in Africa, with a population of about 224,000. 

 
Population: 1.8 million
 
Religions:  Christian 71.6%, none 20.6%, Badimo 6%, other 1.4%, unspecified 0.4%.
 
Ethnic Groups: Tswana 79%, Kalanga 11%, Basarwa 3%, other (including Kgalagadi and white) 7%.
 
Languages: Setswana (official) 66.9%, Kalanga 9.4%, Kgalagadi 2.5%, Yeyi 1.3%, Herero 1.3%, Afrikaans 0.4%, English (official). There are 28 living languages in Botswana.
 
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History
The area now known as Botswana has been inhabited since at least 17,000 BC, initially by nomadic hunters and gatherers, and later by pastoralists. Farming was introduced around 200 AD, and all three modes of production co-existed for many centuries thereafter. Starting in the late 17th century, the Tswana began their conquest, not only of today’s Botswana, but of much of Southern Africa. In the middle of the nineteenth century, under pressure from the Boers to the South and from other African peoples, the Tswana allied themselves with the British, who in 1885 declared a protectorate over what they termed “Bechuanaland.” In so doing, the British actually divided the Tswana people, or Batswana, between Bechuanaland and South Africa’s North West Province, where 2.2 million Setswana speakers live today. In general, however, the British took little interest in Bechuanaland, subordinating its needs to those of the wealthier South Africa. Indeed, in 1950, the British government barred Seretse Khama from the chieftainship of the Ngwato people and exiled him for six years, because of pressure from the apartheid government of South Africa, which objected to his marriage to a white woman. Partly in response to this scandal, an independence movement under Khama’s leadership began to gain steam in the 1950s, and in 1964, the British accepted a proposal for independence, which was formally declared on September 30, 1966, with Khama elected the first President. At first, the country was unable to pay for its own governance, but the discovery of diamonds at Orapa gave the new nation a lucrative new source of wealth, which it has been exploiting ever since. The government has extended basic infrastructure for mining development and basic social services for its population.  Economic growth since the late 1960s has been robust, aided by a stable political climate and progressive policies. Since the 1980s, however, the country has been suffering terribly from the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Although the government has implemented an aggressive strategy to treat HIV-infected persons and prevent the disease’s further spread, the depth of the public health crisis, and its implications for Botswana’s future, can hardly be overstated. According to the United Nations, in 2007 there were about 300,000 Batswana living with HIV, giving Botswana an adult HIV prevalence rate of 23.9%, the second highest in the world after Swaziland. 
 

 

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Botswana's Newspapers
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History of U.S. Relations with Botswana

Relations between the United States and Botswana have been friendly and cooperative since the latter’s independence in 1966. The U.S. has long supported Botswana because of its democratic traditions and political stability. Two key points of contact from the beginning were the Peace Corps and USAID. The Peace Corps first sent volunteers to Botswana in 1967, and continued to do for thirty years, ending the long relationship in 1997 because of the country’s growing prosperity. Similarly, in 1996 USAID phased out a longstanding partnership with Botswana, which included programs emphasizing education, training, entrepreneurship, environmental management, and reproductive health. USAID did not entirely leave Botswana, however, for its Southern Africa Global Competitiveness Hub, an initiative to help Southern African businesses sell more of their products on global markets, is headquartered in Gaborone. Further, the U.S. International Board of Broadcasters (IBB) operates a major Voice of America (VOA) relay station in Botswana, serving most of the African continent. 

 
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Current U.S. Relations with Botswana

Botswana has aggressively promoted conservation, with the result that it is now one of the premier travel destinations for those wanting to view African wildlife in its natural habitat. Indeed, 17,670 Americans visited Botswana in 2004, an increase of 17.1% from the 15,087 that came to Botswana in 2003, mainly to go on safari in the country’s large national parks. Only 2,038 Batswana visited the U.S in 2006, a decrease of 10.2% from the 2,269 that visited in 2005. The number of visitors has fluctuated between a low of 1,873 in 2003 and a high of 2,273 in 2004. 

 
Botswana has earned the praise of the U.S. by playing a leading role in the ongoing political and economic crisis in neighboring Zimbabwe, where corruption and mismanagement on the part of President Robert Mugabe’s government has led to runaway inflation of 50,000,000% per year and bloody political violence during the 2008 elections, which international observers described as neither free nor fair (PDF). In contrast to other countries in the region, which have taken a relatively neutral stance vis-à-vis Mugabe’s regime, Botswana has openly criticized the Zimbabwean strongman, urging him to step down and boycotting international conferences in which he participates.   
 
The public health crises in Botswana have generated a vigorous response from Washington. In 1995, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) started the BOTUSA Project in collaboration with the Botswana Ministry of Health in order to generate information to improve tuberculosis (TB) control efforts in Botswana and elsewhere.  While the program started out with a focus on TB, the urgent nature of the AIDS epidemic in Botswana yielded a broadening of scope to include HIV/AIDS. Specifically, starting with the 1999 Leadership and Investment in Fighting an Epidemic (LIFE) initiative, CDC has undertaken projects through BOTUSA and has assisted many organizations in the fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Botswana.  Further, Botswana is one of the 15 focus countries for PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, and has received more than $381 million since the program began in January 2004 through Summer 2008.  PEPFAR assistance to Botswana, which totaled $76.2 million in FY 2007, is contributing to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and care interventions. Finally, the U.S. Peace Corps returned to Botswana in 2003 with a focus on HIV/AIDS-related programs after concluding 30 years of more broadly targeted assistance in 1997. The Peace Corps programs focus on HIV/AIDS education and prevention at the local level. 
 
Botswana has always spent heavily on education, and the U.S. has figured prominently in two recent higher education initiatives in Botswana. First, the jointly financed International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA), situated just outside of Gaborone, opened in March 2003. The academy, jointly managed and staffed by the two nations, has provided training to more than 3,000 police and government officials from across the Sub-Saharan region.  Second, Howard University in Washington, DC, has played a leading role in the planning for the Botswana International University for Science and Technology (BIUST) (PDF), which will be Botswana’s second university. 
 
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Where Does the Money Flow

Although agriculture (mainly subsistence farming and cattle raising) still provides a livelihood for more than 80% of the population, this sector supplies only about 50% of Botswana’s food needs and accounts for only 1.6% of GDP. Industry accounts for 51% of GDP, with 36% arising from diamond mining, which accounts for more than 70% of the country’s export earnings. In fact, Botswana is now the leading diamond producer in the world, selling about 25% of world production. Botswana’s economic growth has consistently been the highest in Africa, but the threat of HIV/AIDS to the demographic integrity of the population, and the expected fall off in diamond production starting around 2020, cloud the future economic horizon.

 
Botswana’s main trading partners are Europe, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. In terms of U.S.-Botswana trade, in 2007 the U.S. exported $53.8 million worth of goods to Botswana, mainly minimum value shipments ($23.7 million or 44%), industrial and business equipment ($15 million or 27.8%), and aircraft ($5.5 million or 10.2%). The U.S. imported $187.4 million worth of goods from Botswana, dominated by gem diamonds ($134 million or 71.5%), apparel and textiles ($31.6 million or 16.8%), and sulfur and nonmetallic minerals ($20.1 million or 10.7%). 
 
Of the $41.8 million in U.S. aid to Botswana, $41.0 million went to the HIV/AIDS initiative, and $800,000 went to International Military Education and Training program. The proposed 2008 budget includes a doubling of the HIV/AIDS program to $79.0 million to help solve the rampant health problems in the country: 33.4% of pregnant women have been diagnosed with HIV.
 
 
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Controversies

Botswana is one of only a few nations to sign an “impunity agreement” exempting U.S. personnel from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. 

 
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Human Rights

Botswana has been a multiparty democracy since its independence in 1966.  Its constitution provides for indirect election of a president and popular election of a national assembly.  Since independence, Botswana has enjoyed an unbroken string of peaceful and fair elections, in which all parties were allowed to participate and the results have been implemented. The military has never attempted to seize power. In 2004 the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), led by President Festus G. Mogae, returned to power in elections generally deemed free and fair.  The BDP has held a majority of national assembly seats since independence.  The civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of the security forces.

 
The following human rights problems do exist in Botswana: abuse of detainees by security forces, poor prison conditions, lengthy delays in the judicial process, restrictions on press freedom, violence against women, and child abuse.  The government does not fully respect labor rights, both by restricting the right to strike and not enforcing child labor laws.  There is societal discrimination against homosexuals, persons with HIV/AIDS, and members of the San ethnic group.  The government’s continued narrow interpretation of a December 2006 High Court ruling resulted in the majority of San originally forced out of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) in 1997 being prohibited from returning to or hunting in the CKGR.
 
 
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Debate
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Past Ambassadors

Name: Charles J. Nelson

State of Residency: District of Columbia
Non-career appointee
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Jun 9, 1971
Presentation of Credentials: Sep 14, 1971
Termination of Mission: Left post, Mar 2, 1974
Note: Also accredited to Lesotho and Swaziland and resident at Gaborone, Botswana.
 
Name: David B. Bolen
State of Residency: Colorado
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Feb 28, 1974
Presentation of Credentials: Apr 11, 1974
Termination of Mission: Left post, Aug 11, 1976
Note: Also accredited to Lesotho and Swaziland; resident at Gaborone.
Note: Bolen also served as ambassador to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) from 1977 to 1980.  He was a member of the U.S. Olympic track and field team at the 1948 Summer Olympic Games in London, placing fourth in the 400 meters.
 
Name: Donald R. Norland
State of Residency: Iowa
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Nov 17, 1976
Presentation of Credentials: Dec 14, 1976
Termination of Mission: Left post, Oct 6, 1979
Note: Also accredited to Lesotho and Swaziland; resident at Gaborone. Commissioned during a recess of the Senate; recommissioned after confirmation on Jun 24, 1977. Norland also served as ambassador to Chad from 1979 to 1980. 
 
Name: Horace G. Dawson, Jr.
State of Residency: Georgia
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Oct 12, 1979
Presentation of Credentials: Nov 27, 1979
Termination of Mission: Left post Aug 27, 1982
 
Name: Theodore C. Maino
State of Residency: California
Non-career appointee
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Sep 30, 1982
Presentation of Credentials: Dec 2, 1982
Termination of Mission: Left post, Sep 6, 1985
 
Name: Natale H. Bellochi
State of Residency: New York
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Oct 28, 1985
Presentation of Credentials: Nov 19, 1985
Termination of Mission: Left post, Sep 16, 1988
 
Name: John Florian Kordek
State of Residency: Illinois
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Aug 11, 1988
Presentation of Credentials: Sep 29, 1988
Termination of Mission: Left post, Nov 1, 1989
 
Name: David Passage
State of Residency: North Carolina
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Jun 27, 1990
Presentation of Credentials: Aug 7, 1990
Termination of Mission: Left post, Apr 29, 1993
 
Name: Howard Franklin Jeter
State of Residency: South Carolina
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Jul 16, 1993
Presentation of Credentials: Sep 9, 1993
Termination of Mission: Left post, Jun 21, 1996
Note: Jeter also served as ambassador to Nigeria from 2001 to 2003.
 
Name: Robert Krueger
State of Residency: Texas
Non-career appointee
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Jun 6, 1996
Presentation of Credentials: Jul 23, 1996
Termination of Mission: Left post Dec 6, 1999
Note: A Democrat, Krueger also served as a Member of Congress from 1975 to 1979, as a U.S. Senator from Texas for five months in 1993, and as ambassador to Burundi from 1994 to 1995, at the time of the genocide in neighboring Rwanda. 
 
Name: John E. Lange
State of Residency: Wisconsin
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Nov 16, 1999
Presentation of Credentials: Dec 15, 1999
Termination of Mission: Left post Aug 8, 2002
 
Name: Joseph Huggins
State of Residency: District of Columbia
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Nov 15, 2002
Presentation of Credentials: Jan 28, 2003
Termination of Mission: Left post, Jul 26, 2005
 
Name: Emil M. Skodon
State of Residency: Illinois
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment:
Presentation of Credentials:
Termination of Mission:
Note: Nomination not acted upon by the Senate
 
Name: Katherine Hubay (Petersen) Canavan
State of Residency: California
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Aug 2, 2005
Presentation of Credentials: Sep 27, 2005
Termination of Mission: June 2008
Note: Canavan also served as ambassador to Lesotho from 1998 to 2001.
 
 
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Botswana's Ambassador to the U.S.
ambassador-image Lekoa, Lapologang Caesar

Lapologang Caesar Lekoa has been Botswana’s Ambassador to the United States since December 2002, and also serves as ambassador to Canada, Brazil, Mexico and Trinidad and Tobago. Born on February 17, 1954, in Pilikwe, Botswana (then Bechuanaland), Lekoa earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Administration at the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland in 1977. That same year, Lekoa joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After a series of junior positions, he served as first secretary to the Botswana High Commission in London from 1985 to 1987, and then as Counselor and Head of Chancery at the Botswana Embassy and Mission to the European Union in Brussels, Belgium, from 1987 to 1991. Returning home in 1992, he was named Director of International Relations at the Department of Foreign Affairs, a post he held through 1995. From 1996 to 2002, Lekoa served as High Commissioner of Botswana to Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. In addition to English and Tswana, he speaks French. 
 
 

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Botswana's Embassy Web Site in the U.S.
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U.S. Ambassador to Botswana

Miller, Earl R.
ambassador-image

 

On July 29, 2014, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on the nomination of Earl Robert Miller, a career Foreign Service officer, to be the next U.S. ambassador to Botswana. It would be the first ambassadorial post for Miller. Botswana hosts the U.S. Air Force, and the United States is the leading purchaser of Botswana’s most important export: polished diamonds.

 

The son of Robert James Miller and Wanda Miller, Miller attended the University of Michigan, where he earned a B.A. in journalism in 1981. He went into the U.S. Marine Corps after graduation, serving on active duty until 1984. Miller then worked as a supervisor at Arantek, a Santa Clara, California, electronics company until 1987. He continued serving in the Marine Corps Reserve until 1992, doing a tour during the first Gulf War.

 

He then went into the Foreign Service, focusing on diplomatic security. Some of his early positions were Southern Africa desk officer for the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), a DSS special agent in Miami, assistant regional security officer in El Salvador and a DSS special agent in San Francisco.

 

In 1995, Miller began his first tour in Botswana as a regional security officer (RSO) at the U.S. Embassy in Gaborone. He served there three years until he was brought back to the United States as the assistant special agent in charge for the DSS in Boston.

 

Miller went overseas again in 2000 as RSO at the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In 2003 he took on a similar post in Jakarta, Indonesia. While there, he helped investigate an August 31, 2002, terrorist ambush in Papua province that killed two U.S. schoolteachers and wounded eight other U.S. citizens, an investigation that lasted almost four years and culminated in the arrest of 12 terrorists.

 

In 2007, Miller was sent to Baghdad as RSO, leaving his wife Ana and their two sons, Andrew and Alexander, behind in Jakarta. He was assigned to the embassy in New Delhi, India, the following year, serving there until 2011.

 

In 2011, Miller was named consul general at the U.S. consulate in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he served until his nomination to the Botswana post.

 

Miller speaks Indonesian, Spanish and French.

-Steve Straehley

 

To Learn More:

Official Biography

Testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (pdf)

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Previous U.S. Ambassador to Botswana

Gavin, Michelle
ambassador-image

The U.S. Ambassador to Botswana, a lightly-populated nation in Southern Africa which is the world’s leading producer of diamonds and suffers the world’s second highest HIV/AIDS infection rate, is a relatively young foreign policy expert who has specialized in African affairs for more than a decade and was the first Senate staffer to brief then Senator Barack Obama on African issues. Michelle D. Gavin was confirmed by the Senate on April 14, 2011, and arrived at the embassy in Gaborone, Botswana, in June 2011.

 
Born in June 1973 to Michael and Jeanette Gavin and hailing from Arizona, Michelle Gavin earned a B.A. at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in 1996, where she was a Truman Scholar, and an MPhil in International Relations at Oxford University in 1998, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.
 
Since leaving Oxford, Gavin has been on the fast-track to foreign policy prominence. She served as the primary foreign policy adviser to Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin), from October 1999 to October 2005, where she worked on the creation of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction and the reform of U.S. policy relating to HIV/AIDS treatment abroad. She also served as the staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on African Affairs. She moved up to a legislative director position in October 2005, when she went to work for U.S. Senator Ken Salazar (D-Colorado), with whom she remained until December 2006.
 
Gavin then left government service to be an Adjunct Fellow for Africa and an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, from early 2007 to early 2009, when she joined the new Obama administration as a Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Africa at the National Security Council. Obama’s appreciation of her talents was revealed when, in December 2010, shortly after Gavin had announced her intention to leave the White House, Vice President Joe Biden told President Obama, “Mr. President, whatever you do don’t let her leave,” with the President replying, “I know she's one of the best we've got, and I wouldn’t let her leave unless I knew she was going to be able to help us in the future.” Just two months later, in February 2011, Obama nominated Gavin to be ambassador to Botswana.
 
Gavin met her husband David Bonfili at Truman Scholar interviews. They are the parents of a daughter, Clara, born in 2009.
 
 

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Overview
Thanks to its small population and an abundance of diamonds, Botswana has been able to develop into an African success story. Arid, impoverished, and lacking basic infrastructure when it gained independence from Great Britain in 1966, Botswana consistently enjoyed double-digit economic growth for more than three decades and built a democratic political system in which free and fair elections have been the only means for changing the government, which has gained a reputation as the least corrupt in Africa. Botswana is the world’s leading producer of diamonds, and African wildlife abounds in its vast game preserves, to which safari-bound people flock from around the world. Botswana has been hit hard by the HIV/AIDS crisis, and has the second highest rate of infection in the world (23.9% in 2007), yet it has responded by creating Africa’s most progressive and effective AIDS prevention and education programs. 
 
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Basic Information

Lay of the Land: Botswana is a semi-arid, subtropical, landlocked country located in Southern Africa. It is bordered by South Africa to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west, Zambia to the north, and Zimbabwe to the northeast. The flat to gently rolling terrain is dominated by the Kalahari Desert, which comprises about 70% of Botswana’s total area of 231,788 square miles, making the country slightly smaller than the state of Texas. Owing to its aridity, Botswana is one of the most sparsely populated countries in Africa, as the country’s 1.8 million people are clustered mainly in the eastern third of the country. The capital and largest city is Gaborone, the fastest growing city in Africa, with a population of about 224,000. 

 
Population: 1.8 million
 
Religions:  Christian 71.6%, none 20.6%, Badimo 6%, other 1.4%, unspecified 0.4%.
 
Ethnic Groups: Tswana 79%, Kalanga 11%, Basarwa 3%, other (including Kgalagadi and white) 7%.
 
Languages: Setswana (official) 66.9%, Kalanga 9.4%, Kgalagadi 2.5%, Yeyi 1.3%, Herero 1.3%, Afrikaans 0.4%, English (official). There are 28 living languages in Botswana.
 
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History
The area now known as Botswana has been inhabited since at least 17,000 BC, initially by nomadic hunters and gatherers, and later by pastoralists. Farming was introduced around 200 AD, and all three modes of production co-existed for many centuries thereafter. Starting in the late 17th century, the Tswana began their conquest, not only of today’s Botswana, but of much of Southern Africa. In the middle of the nineteenth century, under pressure from the Boers to the South and from other African peoples, the Tswana allied themselves with the British, who in 1885 declared a protectorate over what they termed “Bechuanaland.” In so doing, the British actually divided the Tswana people, or Batswana, between Bechuanaland and South Africa’s North West Province, where 2.2 million Setswana speakers live today. In general, however, the British took little interest in Bechuanaland, subordinating its needs to those of the wealthier South Africa. Indeed, in 1950, the British government barred Seretse Khama from the chieftainship of the Ngwato people and exiled him for six years, because of pressure from the apartheid government of South Africa, which objected to his marriage to a white woman. Partly in response to this scandal, an independence movement under Khama’s leadership began to gain steam in the 1950s, and in 1964, the British accepted a proposal for independence, which was formally declared on September 30, 1966, with Khama elected the first President. At first, the country was unable to pay for its own governance, but the discovery of diamonds at Orapa gave the new nation a lucrative new source of wealth, which it has been exploiting ever since. The government has extended basic infrastructure for mining development and basic social services for its population.  Economic growth since the late 1960s has been robust, aided by a stable political climate and progressive policies. Since the 1980s, however, the country has been suffering terribly from the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Although the government has implemented an aggressive strategy to treat HIV-infected persons and prevent the disease’s further spread, the depth of the public health crisis, and its implications for Botswana’s future, can hardly be overstated. According to the United Nations, in 2007 there were about 300,000 Batswana living with HIV, giving Botswana an adult HIV prevalence rate of 23.9%, the second highest in the world after Swaziland. 
 

 

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Botswana's Newspapers
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History of U.S. Relations with Botswana

Relations between the United States and Botswana have been friendly and cooperative since the latter’s independence in 1966. The U.S. has long supported Botswana because of its democratic traditions and political stability. Two key points of contact from the beginning were the Peace Corps and USAID. The Peace Corps first sent volunteers to Botswana in 1967, and continued to do for thirty years, ending the long relationship in 1997 because of the country’s growing prosperity. Similarly, in 1996 USAID phased out a longstanding partnership with Botswana, which included programs emphasizing education, training, entrepreneurship, environmental management, and reproductive health. USAID did not entirely leave Botswana, however, for its Southern Africa Global Competitiveness Hub, an initiative to help Southern African businesses sell more of their products on global markets, is headquartered in Gaborone. Further, the U.S. International Board of Broadcasters (IBB) operates a major Voice of America (VOA) relay station in Botswana, serving most of the African continent. 

 
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Current U.S. Relations with Botswana

Botswana has aggressively promoted conservation, with the result that it is now one of the premier travel destinations for those wanting to view African wildlife in its natural habitat. Indeed, 17,670 Americans visited Botswana in 2004, an increase of 17.1% from the 15,087 that came to Botswana in 2003, mainly to go on safari in the country’s large national parks. Only 2,038 Batswana visited the U.S in 2006, a decrease of 10.2% from the 2,269 that visited in 2005. The number of visitors has fluctuated between a low of 1,873 in 2003 and a high of 2,273 in 2004. 

 
Botswana has earned the praise of the U.S. by playing a leading role in the ongoing political and economic crisis in neighboring Zimbabwe, where corruption and mismanagement on the part of President Robert Mugabe’s government has led to runaway inflation of 50,000,000% per year and bloody political violence during the 2008 elections, which international observers described as neither free nor fair (PDF). In contrast to other countries in the region, which have taken a relatively neutral stance vis-à-vis Mugabe’s regime, Botswana has openly criticized the Zimbabwean strongman, urging him to step down and boycotting international conferences in which he participates.   
 
The public health crises in Botswana have generated a vigorous response from Washington. In 1995, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) started the BOTUSA Project in collaboration with the Botswana Ministry of Health in order to generate information to improve tuberculosis (TB) control efforts in Botswana and elsewhere.  While the program started out with a focus on TB, the urgent nature of the AIDS epidemic in Botswana yielded a broadening of scope to include HIV/AIDS. Specifically, starting with the 1999 Leadership and Investment in Fighting an Epidemic (LIFE) initiative, CDC has undertaken projects through BOTUSA and has assisted many organizations in the fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Botswana.  Further, Botswana is one of the 15 focus countries for PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, and has received more than $381 million since the program began in January 2004 through Summer 2008.  PEPFAR assistance to Botswana, which totaled $76.2 million in FY 2007, is contributing to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and care interventions. Finally, the U.S. Peace Corps returned to Botswana in 2003 with a focus on HIV/AIDS-related programs after concluding 30 years of more broadly targeted assistance in 1997. The Peace Corps programs focus on HIV/AIDS education and prevention at the local level. 
 
Botswana has always spent heavily on education, and the U.S. has figured prominently in two recent higher education initiatives in Botswana. First, the jointly financed International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA), situated just outside of Gaborone, opened in March 2003. The academy, jointly managed and staffed by the two nations, has provided training to more than 3,000 police and government officials from across the Sub-Saharan region.  Second, Howard University in Washington, DC, has played a leading role in the planning for the Botswana International University for Science and Technology (BIUST) (PDF), which will be Botswana’s second university. 
 
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Where Does the Money Flow

Although agriculture (mainly subsistence farming and cattle raising) still provides a livelihood for more than 80% of the population, this sector supplies only about 50% of Botswana’s food needs and accounts for only 1.6% of GDP. Industry accounts for 51% of GDP, with 36% arising from diamond mining, which accounts for more than 70% of the country’s export earnings. In fact, Botswana is now the leading diamond producer in the world, selling about 25% of world production. Botswana’s economic growth has consistently been the highest in Africa, but the threat of HIV/AIDS to the demographic integrity of the population, and the expected fall off in diamond production starting around 2020, cloud the future economic horizon.

 
Botswana’s main trading partners are Europe, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. In terms of U.S.-Botswana trade, in 2007 the U.S. exported $53.8 million worth of goods to Botswana, mainly minimum value shipments ($23.7 million or 44%), industrial and business equipment ($15 million or 27.8%), and aircraft ($5.5 million or 10.2%). The U.S. imported $187.4 million worth of goods from Botswana, dominated by gem diamonds ($134 million or 71.5%), apparel and textiles ($31.6 million or 16.8%), and sulfur and nonmetallic minerals ($20.1 million or 10.7%). 
 
Of the $41.8 million in U.S. aid to Botswana, $41.0 million went to the HIV/AIDS initiative, and $800,000 went to International Military Education and Training program. The proposed 2008 budget includes a doubling of the HIV/AIDS program to $79.0 million to help solve the rampant health problems in the country: 33.4% of pregnant women have been diagnosed with HIV.
 
 
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Controversies

Botswana is one of only a few nations to sign an “impunity agreement” exempting U.S. personnel from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. 

 
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Human Rights

Botswana has been a multiparty democracy since its independence in 1966.  Its constitution provides for indirect election of a president and popular election of a national assembly.  Since independence, Botswana has enjoyed an unbroken string of peaceful and fair elections, in which all parties were allowed to participate and the results have been implemented. The military has never attempted to seize power. In 2004 the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), led by President Festus G. Mogae, returned to power in elections generally deemed free and fair.  The BDP has held a majority of national assembly seats since independence.  The civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of the security forces.

 
The following human rights problems do exist in Botswana: abuse of detainees by security forces, poor prison conditions, lengthy delays in the judicial process, restrictions on press freedom, violence against women, and child abuse.  The government does not fully respect labor rights, both by restricting the right to strike and not enforcing child labor laws.  There is societal discrimination against homosexuals, persons with HIV/AIDS, and members of the San ethnic group.  The government’s continued narrow interpretation of a December 2006 High Court ruling resulted in the majority of San originally forced out of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) in 1997 being prohibited from returning to or hunting in the CKGR.
 
 
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Debate
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Past Ambassadors

Name: Charles J. Nelson

State of Residency: District of Columbia
Non-career appointee
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Jun 9, 1971
Presentation of Credentials: Sep 14, 1971
Termination of Mission: Left post, Mar 2, 1974
Note: Also accredited to Lesotho and Swaziland and resident at Gaborone, Botswana.
 
Name: David B. Bolen
State of Residency: Colorado
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Feb 28, 1974
Presentation of Credentials: Apr 11, 1974
Termination of Mission: Left post, Aug 11, 1976
Note: Also accredited to Lesotho and Swaziland; resident at Gaborone.
Note: Bolen also served as ambassador to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) from 1977 to 1980.  He was a member of the U.S. Olympic track and field team at the 1948 Summer Olympic Games in London, placing fourth in the 400 meters.
 
Name: Donald R. Norland
State of Residency: Iowa
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Nov 17, 1976
Presentation of Credentials: Dec 14, 1976
Termination of Mission: Left post, Oct 6, 1979
Note: Also accredited to Lesotho and Swaziland; resident at Gaborone. Commissioned during a recess of the Senate; recommissioned after confirmation on Jun 24, 1977. Norland also served as ambassador to Chad from 1979 to 1980. 
 
Name: Horace G. Dawson, Jr.
State of Residency: Georgia
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Oct 12, 1979
Presentation of Credentials: Nov 27, 1979
Termination of Mission: Left post Aug 27, 1982
 
Name: Theodore C. Maino
State of Residency: California
Non-career appointee
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Sep 30, 1982
Presentation of Credentials: Dec 2, 1982
Termination of Mission: Left post, Sep 6, 1985
 
Name: Natale H. Bellochi
State of Residency: New York
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Oct 28, 1985
Presentation of Credentials: Nov 19, 1985
Termination of Mission: Left post, Sep 16, 1988
 
Name: John Florian Kordek
State of Residency: Illinois
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Aug 11, 1988
Presentation of Credentials: Sep 29, 1988
Termination of Mission: Left post, Nov 1, 1989
 
Name: David Passage
State of Residency: North Carolina
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Jun 27, 1990
Presentation of Credentials: Aug 7, 1990
Termination of Mission: Left post, Apr 29, 1993
 
Name: Howard Franklin Jeter
State of Residency: South Carolina
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Jul 16, 1993
Presentation of Credentials: Sep 9, 1993
Termination of Mission: Left post, Jun 21, 1996
Note: Jeter also served as ambassador to Nigeria from 2001 to 2003.
 
Name: Robert Krueger
State of Residency: Texas
Non-career appointee
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Jun 6, 1996
Presentation of Credentials: Jul 23, 1996
Termination of Mission: Left post Dec 6, 1999
Note: A Democrat, Krueger also served as a Member of Congress from 1975 to 1979, as a U.S. Senator from Texas for five months in 1993, and as ambassador to Burundi from 1994 to 1995, at the time of the genocide in neighboring Rwanda. 
 
Name: John E. Lange
State of Residency: Wisconsin
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Nov 16, 1999
Presentation of Credentials: Dec 15, 1999
Termination of Mission: Left post Aug 8, 2002
 
Name: Joseph Huggins
State of Residency: District of Columbia
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Nov 15, 2002
Presentation of Credentials: Jan 28, 2003
Termination of Mission: Left post, Jul 26, 2005
 
Name: Emil M. Skodon
State of Residency: Illinois
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment:
Presentation of Credentials:
Termination of Mission:
Note: Nomination not acted upon by the Senate
 
Name: Katherine Hubay (Petersen) Canavan
State of Residency: California
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Aug 2, 2005
Presentation of Credentials: Sep 27, 2005
Termination of Mission: June 2008
Note: Canavan also served as ambassador to Lesotho from 1998 to 2001.
 
 
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Botswana's Ambassador to the U.S.
ambassador-image Lekoa, Lapologang Caesar

Lapologang Caesar Lekoa has been Botswana’s Ambassador to the United States since December 2002, and also serves as ambassador to Canada, Brazil, Mexico and Trinidad and Tobago. Born on February 17, 1954, in Pilikwe, Botswana (then Bechuanaland), Lekoa earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Administration at the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland in 1977. That same year, Lekoa joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After a series of junior positions, he served as first secretary to the Botswana High Commission in London from 1985 to 1987, and then as Counselor and Head of Chancery at the Botswana Embassy and Mission to the European Union in Brussels, Belgium, from 1987 to 1991. Returning home in 1992, he was named Director of International Relations at the Department of Foreign Affairs, a post he held through 1995. From 1996 to 2002, Lekoa served as High Commissioner of Botswana to Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. In addition to English and Tswana, he speaks French. 
 
 

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Botswana's Embassy Web Site in the U.S.
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U.S. Ambassador to Botswana

Miller, Earl R.
ambassador-image

 

On July 29, 2014, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on the nomination of Earl Robert Miller, a career Foreign Service officer, to be the next U.S. ambassador to Botswana. It would be the first ambassadorial post for Miller. Botswana hosts the U.S. Air Force, and the United States is the leading purchaser of Botswana’s most important export: polished diamonds.

 

The son of Robert James Miller and Wanda Miller, Miller attended the University of Michigan, where he earned a B.A. in journalism in 1981. He went into the U.S. Marine Corps after graduation, serving on active duty until 1984. Miller then worked as a supervisor at Arantek, a Santa Clara, California, electronics company until 1987. He continued serving in the Marine Corps Reserve until 1992, doing a tour during the first Gulf War.

 

He then went into the Foreign Service, focusing on diplomatic security. Some of his early positions were Southern Africa desk officer for the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), a DSS special agent in Miami, assistant regional security officer in El Salvador and a DSS special agent in San Francisco.

 

In 1995, Miller began his first tour in Botswana as a regional security officer (RSO) at the U.S. Embassy in Gaborone. He served there three years until he was brought back to the United States as the assistant special agent in charge for the DSS in Boston.

 

Miller went overseas again in 2000 as RSO at the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In 2003 he took on a similar post in Jakarta, Indonesia. While there, he helped investigate an August 31, 2002, terrorist ambush in Papua province that killed two U.S. schoolteachers and wounded eight other U.S. citizens, an investigation that lasted almost four years and culminated in the arrest of 12 terrorists.

 

In 2007, Miller was sent to Baghdad as RSO, leaving his wife Ana and their two sons, Andrew and Alexander, behind in Jakarta. He was assigned to the embassy in New Delhi, India, the following year, serving there until 2011.

 

In 2011, Miller was named consul general at the U.S. consulate in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he served until his nomination to the Botswana post.

 

Miller speaks Indonesian, Spanish and French.

-Steve Straehley

 

To Learn More:

Official Biography

Testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (pdf)

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Previous U.S. Ambassador to Botswana

Gavin, Michelle
ambassador-image

The U.S. Ambassador to Botswana, a lightly-populated nation in Southern Africa which is the world’s leading producer of diamonds and suffers the world’s second highest HIV/AIDS infection rate, is a relatively young foreign policy expert who has specialized in African affairs for more than a decade and was the first Senate staffer to brief then Senator Barack Obama on African issues. Michelle D. Gavin was confirmed by the Senate on April 14, 2011, and arrived at the embassy in Gaborone, Botswana, in June 2011.

 
Born in June 1973 to Michael and Jeanette Gavin and hailing from Arizona, Michelle Gavin earned a B.A. at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in 1996, where she was a Truman Scholar, and an MPhil in International Relations at Oxford University in 1998, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.
 
Since leaving Oxford, Gavin has been on the fast-track to foreign policy prominence. She served as the primary foreign policy adviser to Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin), from October 1999 to October 2005, where she worked on the creation of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction and the reform of U.S. policy relating to HIV/AIDS treatment abroad. She also served as the staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on African Affairs. She moved up to a legislative director position in October 2005, when she went to work for U.S. Senator Ken Salazar (D-Colorado), with whom she remained until December 2006.
 
Gavin then left government service to be an Adjunct Fellow for Africa and an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, from early 2007 to early 2009, when she joined the new Obama administration as a Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Africa at the National Security Council. Obama’s appreciation of her talents was revealed when, in December 2010, shortly after Gavin had announced her intention to leave the White House, Vice President Joe Biden told President Obama, “Mr. President, whatever you do don’t let her leave,” with the President replying, “I know she's one of the best we've got, and I wouldn’t let her leave unless I knew she was going to be able to help us in the future.” Just two months later, in February 2011, Obama nominated Gavin to be ambassador to Botswana.
 
Gavin met her husband David Bonfili at Truman Scholar interviews. They are the parents of a daughter, Clara, born in 2009.
 
 

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