When Botswana sells itself to international investors and tourists wanting to spend money here, international rankings from globally respected bodies that credit Botswana as being ‘better’ in some way are often cited.
On that score, the country often measures itself against its African counterparts for two reasons.
First, they are its main competitors, plodding the same road. Secondly it makes sense to measure yourself against your neighbours.
And so would-be investors and tourists are wooed and enticed to come to Botswana with the catch phrase “Our pride and your destination”.
But why limit ourselves in this regard? Surely if we indeed are in pursuit of excellence, then we should surely as students graduate to the next level?
However, that would entail comparing ourselves against countries and regions that continually outperform our own. Then it would be back to the bottom of the class.
Numbers speak for themselves. So here’s Botswana by the numbers.
In 1966 Botswana was the second poorest country in the world with a GDP per capita of about US$70. As a country we inherited six kilometers of tarred roads, three secondary schools and six university graduates from Imperial Britain.
The dangers and difficulties faced by what was then the Bechuanaland Protectorate included, but were not limited to minimal investment by colonial authorities during the protectorate period, encirclement by hostile minority-ruled racist states, a proclivity to drought, agricultural pests and animal diseases.
At the time, Botswana’s development prospects were deemed poor to non-existent. Present day Botswana is one of the world’s preeminent economic performers and since independence it has graduated from low income status into the ranks of middle-income states, with an average annual growth rate of about 9 percent from 1966 to 1999.
Growth in private sector employment has averaged about 10 percent per annum over the first 30 years of independence. Real GDP based on the revised estimates and at the new constant 2006 prices increased at an average annual rate of 4.6 percent between 1994 and 2011.
Real GDP growth tempered from 7 percent in 2010 to 5.1 percent growth in 2011 and would have been stronger than the 6.1 percent projected for 2012 were it not for the slowdown in the mining sector in the third quarter of 2012.
Performance in the non-mining sector has remained robust since the first quarter of 2011, with non-mining real gross value added growth averaging about 10 percent year on year over the previous four quarters.
Today, the World Bank characterizes Botswana’s income level as “upper middle income” with GDP resting at US$14.41 billion in 2012. It further reports that while Botswana’s economic progress has brought about significant increases in living standards ÔÇô with poverty rates declining from over 50 percent in 1966 to 30.6 percent in 2003 and at 21 percent today ÔÇô significant and stubborn pockets of poverty remain.
Education expenditure is high at 8 percent of GDP. The World Bank asserts that unemployment has remained close to 20 percent. As a result, income inequality in Botswana is among one of the highest in the world.
This was confirmed by Gallup in 2012 which reported that unemployment in Botswana is “among the highest unemployment rates in the world… worse than that of South Africa and even Zimbabwe.” In 2009/10 the┬áBotswana┬áCore Welfare Indicators Survey put unemployment at 17.8 percent.
Botswana is ranked first in Africa on Transparency International’s anti-corruption index with an overall ranking of 30 out of 176 surveyed countries, resting comfortably in the top 20 percentile. The 2013 “Index of Economic Freedom” ranks Botswana at 30 amongst the 177 economies surveyed, with an improved overall score of 70.6 (up a full percentage point from last year) placing us above the European (66.6) and Worldwide (58.2) as well as Sub-Saharan Africa (53.6) averages.┬á
When Moody’s Investors Service released Botswana’s 2012 sovereign credit rating, Botswana retained its A2 rating for both foreign and domestic bonds. The A2 rating was based upon an assessment that balanced potential weaknesses arising from the country’s middle-income status and the small size of its economy.┬á
Standard & Poor’s announced that Botswana’s 2013 sovereign credit ratings, was retained at ‘A-‘ and ‘A-2’ for the long and short terms respectively, this evaluation supported by government’s strong balance sheet, a well-managed economy and Botswana’s long record of political stability.
The United Nations Development Programmes (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary measure for assessing long-term progress in three basic dimensions of human development, namely: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living.
In the Human Development Report, a long and healthy life is gauged by life expectancy. Access to knowledge is calculated by: i) mean years of schooling for the adult population, which translates into the average number of years of education received in a life-time by people aged 25 years and older; and ii) expected years of schooling for children of school-entrance age, which is the total number of years of schooling a child of school-entrance age can anticipate to get if prevailing patterns of age-specific enrolment rates stay the same throughout the child’s life. Standard of living is measured by Gross National Income (GNI) per capita.
In 2012’s HDI Botswana ranked 119 out of 187 countries placing it in the medium human development category. Between 1980 and 2012, Botswana’s life expectancy at birth decreased by 7.6 years, mean years of schooling increased by 6.6 years and expected years of schooling increased by 4.4 years.
As of 2001, 86 percent of children who started primary school were likely to reach standard 5 and while girls and boys have equal access to education, girls are more likely to drop out of secondary school due to pregnancy (US Department of Labor).
In 1996, six out of ten teenage girls had been pregnant at least once, but only two out of ten in 2003 (UNFPA ÔÇô United Nations Population Fund). In 2003 Botswana’s sentinel surveillance study reported that 18 percent of pregnant women surveyed at antenatal clinics were younger than 20 years and among them, HIV prevalence was nearly 23 percent while the 2006 Botswana Demographic Health Survey reported a decline in teenage pregnancy from 16.6 percent in 1996 to 9.7 percent in 2012.
Botswana’s GNI per capita (Gross National Income is the dollar value of a country’s final income in a year, divided by its population. It reflects the average income of a country’s citizens) increased by about 298 percent between 1980 and 2012. Botswana’s 2012 HDI score of 0.634 is below the average of 0.64 for countries in the medium human development group and above the average of 0.475 for countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. From Sub-Saharan Africa, countries which are close to Botswana in 2012 HDI rank and population size are Gabon and Namibia, which are ranked 106 and 128 respectively.
Inflation was recorded at 7.5 percent in January 2013. The percentage of the rural population with reasonable access to adequate water from an improved source rests at 93.3 percent (2011). Botswana has improved mobile telephony significantly, with the number of cellular subscriptions exceeding the number of inhabitants for the first time in 2010. The country is ranked 151st (out of 183 countries) in the “trading across borders” category. And finally, military expenditure (as a percentage of GDP) in was last reported at 2.66 percent.
In 2010, according to a World Bank report published in 2012.
That, in brief is Botswana by the numbers, it’s up to you to decide what they’re saying.
