Arriving in Botswana I must admit I did not know too much about the country. Seeing the name of the airport did however strike a chord. HE Seretse Khama was a well known African leader when I was a boy. I learned from my host, who received me at the airport that because of a recent discovery of diamonds, Botswana is today the richest country in Africa, with a per capita income of about 6000 USD. Ironically though there is not much development that is visible, although the CBD of Gaborone, though quite small, has a number of large and impressive buildings, and several others are under construction, including what appears to be a disproportionately large mall in the centre of town. The roads are wide and impressive. I was informed that there is a very high incidence of drinking and driving extremely fast, as the roads are so temptingly good, and so a correspondingly large number of high speed motor accidents. The number of high end cars on the roads is an indication of the wealth of the citizens. Botswana was till recently a primarily agrarian society which is still one of the largest beef exporters in the world. It is correspondingly still a conservative, unambitious and unspoiled society and corruption in high office is essentially unknown. There is a great deal of emphasis on the basics such as education and health, both of which are provided free of cost to the citizens by the government which spends 40% of the GDP on these two entities (wish the Indian government would take heed…). I heard an interesting anecdote about students deliberately failing their examinations in order to stay in college and continue to collect their education allowance from the government. Despite (or because of!) this literacy rates are extremely high at 80%. The government sponsors its best and brightest for overseas education and the faithful return to contribute. The challenge before the government is now to provide employment to the educated, which is a challenge because other than agriculture and mining there have traditionally been no other avenues of employment. Also while Botswana has one of the most famous tourist destinations in the world the Okavango delta, its tourism marketing is essentially nonexistent ( in stark contrast to its neighbor South Africa). Even in terms of diamond mining, the large companies, having run out of resources have turned their attention to Botswana although I was reminded of the East India company in that they mine the raw stones and then immediately take them across the border for the rest of the process to be carried out there.
Lusaka in Zambia was my next stop and I could not help but contrast it with Gaborone. The things that struck me about Gaborone was how widely spread out it was, the relative lack of development, even in the central business district (other than several buildings under construction) and the extremely high end cars on the roads, all of which seemed in very good construction. The vegetation was also largely scrub, desert-like with thorny bushes and trees. In contrast, Lusaka reminded me of New Delhi with wide avenues with shady trees lining their sides and a number of large stately buildings. As I was informed, Zambia was one of the first states of Africa to gain independence. It went through a communist phase and today is undergoing a revival, however it does not have the same diamond reserves as Botswana (copper is the main resource) and so the trappings of wealth are not as evident. There are only 5 radiologists in Zambia, a country of 12 million. I visited a lovely brand new state of the art diagnostic center with all the best equipment.