How to save Botswana’s sparkling reputation

WHEN Ian Khama steps down at the end of the month, after ten years as president, he will leave his country looking perky. Mr Khama has been lavished with praise as he makes a series of farewell sorties around the country. At a recent gathering of farmers, he was “gifted with 35 cattle, a bull, two sheep and goats, a horse, and shares worth 25,000 pula [$2,628] at Tlou Energy”, a coal-development company, according to the pro-government Daily News.

The statistics paint a pretty picture, too. In its annual report card on African governments, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation regularly ranks Botswana near the top. At independence in 1966 it was one of the world’s poorest places, with “only 7km of tarred road and a capital, Gaborone, that amounted to little more than a railway station,” wrote a historian. Now it boasts a GDP per head among the highest in Africa. This is largely because Botswana is the world’s second-biggest producer of diamonds, yet has only 2m people. Mineral wealth has ruined other countries. But Botswana has benefited from prudent economic policies, multiparty politics and fair elections.