Why Botswana Prospered

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

Good news from Africa is so rare that it is a pleasure to find a book
that reports some. With text, graphs, and tables, Leith argues that
Botswana is a success story.

Leith teaches economics at the University of Western Ontario and has
worked as an advisor to the government of Botswana. He knows his subject
well. He makes a convincing case that since independence in 1966,
Botswana’s economy has experienced steady growth, and that Botswana is
a democracy. He attributes Botswana’s achievements to the responsible
behaviour of its people, and to the wise use of its mineral and
agricultural resources. On the negative side, he reports that more than
one-third of its sexually active population is HIV-positive.

Yet, this is not the book a historian might have written. Leith might
have placed greater emphasis on the comparative lack of European
settlers in Botswana. Europeans migrated in much larger numbers to Kenya
and Rhodesia, with their European-friendly climates and considerably
more agricultural land. European rule there ended with wars between the
European settlers and the African majority, not with a peaceful
transition. The wars left a legacy of bitterness and warriors, like
Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, who knew how to fight but were not
necessarily the best leaders in time of peace. Yet, Gambia and Ghana
also lacked significant European populations, and they are not nearly as
prosperous as Botswana. What is the difference?

There are other unanswered questions. Mining was and is the backbone of
Botswana’s economy, as it was of colonial Spanish Peru and Mexico.
Outsiders exploited the minerals, and after independence those countries
did not readily adapt to democracy. Why is Botswana different? Botswana
has a small population in a large space, but the same holds true of
Guyana, the basket case of South America. Unlike Guyana, Botswana lacks
two racially hostile groups, but why have Botswana’s people not fought
each other as have Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda?

This is a scholarly book useful for economists, sociologists, and
political scientists. It is not light reading.