Botswana

Botswana said Thursday it will not accept financial assistance from international organizations working to help hunter-gatherer tribes continue living in a massive game reserve. Over the past few weeks, the government has stepped up efforts to relocate the Basarwa tribes of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, a 52,000-square-kilometer (20,000-square-mile) semidesert region in the middle of the country.

The government of Botswana has threatened to cut off water and other essential services to the Basarwa (Khoisan) still living in the central Kalahari Game Reserve(CKGR), the BBC reports. The government, since 1996, has been trying to persuade the Basarwa
remaining in the reserve to move to relocation camps hundreds of
kilometres away. The authorities' initial argument was that their removal
would allow better wildlife conservation. That has since changed to stress that bette...read more

Botswana is turning to Brazil to reinforce its strategy against HIV/AIDS, demonstrating that South-South cooperation is more than a slogan. The Brazilian response to the HIV/AIDS scourge has impressed experts, who have urged other countries to copy it. Botswana, with one of the world's highest rates of HIV infection, is doing just that. More than one third of its adults are infected, according to the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS, while the rate in Brazil is less than 1 per cent.

The Botswana government's prudent management of the diamond-dependent economy will be challenged by the global economic slowdown, a growing HIV/AIDS burden, and the regional impact of the Zimbabwe crisis, the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) said in its latest forecast.

Public servants should work hard to restore confidence in members of the public that they have the ability to deliver service. Minister of Labour and Home Affairs Daniel Kwelagobe expressed this feeling when opening the 59th Annual General Conference of Botswana Civil Servants Association (BCSA) in Mochudi.

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