9 facts about Botswana every visitor should know

Here are nine facts about Botswana I think every traveller should know for the trip to be more interesting, insightful, and meaningful.

Botswana is a landlocked country smack in the middle of Southern Africa. It’s an incredibly stable place that’s widely admired for its excellent conservation efforts and enormous elephant population, among other things. It’s most famous for being home to the wildlife-rich Okavango Delta and Makgadikgadi Pans. Consequently, Botswana is one of Africa’s top safari destinations.

If you’re considering visiting Botswana, here are nine facts about the country I think you’ll find worth your time …

1. The Okavango Delta is Botswana’s biggest tourism drawcard

The Okavango Delta – a UNESCO World Heritage Site – is one of the world’s largest inland deltas and also the largest Ramsar Wetland site in the world. A type of oasis within the dry Kalahari Basin, it supports a phenomenal quantity of wildlife. It’s a truly spectacular ecosystem.

Whether you fly over the green-and-blue patchwork of the flooded delta or explore its winding waterways in a dugout canoe, you’ll see that it’s an otherworldly and beautiful place. Its wildlife ranges from elephants, buffaloes, lions, and hippos to reedbucks, red lechwes, and otters. The landscape includes thick papyrus swamps and quiet channels dotted with water lilies as well as baobabs and pretty riverine woodlands. Little wonder it’s one of the continent’s top safari destinations.

The delta also has low-lying ‘islands’ and surrounding savannah supporting other wildlife like lions, cheetahs, hyenas, elands, and impalas. So this is an ideal location for experiencing both traditional safaris and rarer water-based safaris.

2. Botswana has more elephants than any other country

According to Elephants Without Borders, which conducts its own aerial surveys, Botswana has around 130,000 elephants. This is more than any other country in the world.

Botswana’s elephants are African savannah elephants, or bush elephants. While not as critically endangered as the African forest elephant or Asian elephant, the bush elephant is still endangered. And so we all owe Botswana a big thank-you for its elephant conservation efforts.

By far the best place to see bush elephants on safari in Botswana is Chobe National Park in the north. It hosts around 120,000 elephants. In the dry season, they congregate in especially large numbers along the banks of the Chobe River. This makes finding them easy, and you may well see a hundred or so at once. What’s more, they’re not the only thirsty creatures around, so the scene that greets you often includes other animals like zebras, wildebeests, buffaloes, and impalas.

3. Botswana has a third of the world’s remaining painted wolves

Painted wolves, or African wild dogs, are Africa’s most endangered canine species. Their Latin name is Lycaon pictus, which means ‘painted wolf-like animal’. I think you’ll agree that their pelts look like canvases that underwent some happy painting.

The African Wildlife Conservation Fund tells us that roughly 130 of the world’s remaining 660 packs are in Botswana. The next highest is neighbouring Zimbabwe with about 85 packs. This means Botswana is your best bet for spotting an African wild dog pack on safari. The beautiful Moremi Game Reserve on the edge of the Okavango Delta is an especially great place to look for them.

Note that you can also find other important endangered wildlife species in Botswana. These include the black rhino, pangolin, mountain reedbuck, and white-backed vulture.

4. Botswana has over 570 bird species

Southern Africa is known for its great avian diversity. And Botswana is pulling its weight in this regard.

Botswana’s high bird species count is thanks in large part to the Okavango Delta, which sustains wetland and riverine species as well as attracting migratory birds in the flooded season. But there are other factors at play too, of course. For instance, the country’s landscape includes an enormous portion of the semi-arid Kalahari Desert, which is home to sand dunes, grasslands, and more.

On traditional safari drives in Botswana, you can find the usual large bird species that always delight foreigners, like ostriches, secretary birds, kori bustards, and snake eagles. Threatened raptors that live here include the aforementioned white-backed vulture as well as the martial eagle and lappet-faced vulture. When visiting one of the country’s northern floodplains or rivers like the Okavango or Chobe, you’ll almost certainly see large flocks of greater and lesser flamingoes, great white and pink-backed pelicans, and red-billed queleas, among many others.

5. Makgadikgadi Pans is one of the world’s largest collections of salt flats

Central Botswana is a seldom-visited region. But it holds the Makgadikgadi Pans, one of the largest collections of salt pans anywhere in the world. So those who do visit are rewarded with experiencing an ethereal, almost-pancake-flat landscape of seemingly neverending salt flats.

For most of the year, you can drive, walk, cycle, or quadbike across these hypnotically unbroken expanses of sand. If you venture out a little ways by yourself, the absence of almost any sound feels weighty and important. Like any desert worth its salt (pun intended), the sunsets here are an extravagant display of intense colours. You’re even allowed to sleep on the pans, where no tent is needed, and all the stars wink down at you.

While the dry season offers a rare sense of the world being emptied of all other people, the flooded season is equally special for the glut of wildlife that descends upon the temporarily filled pans. At this time, flamingoes, pelicans, and other waterbirds are in residence in enormous numbers. Further to this, one of the world’s largest zebra migrations also enters the scene, accompanied by the likes of blue wildebeests, red hartebeests, oryxes, and various stalking predators.

6. Tsodilo Hills has one of the world’s largest rock art collections

The Tsodilo Hills in the wildly remote corner of northwestern Botswana are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This status was awarded because the hills harbour an estimated 4,500 rock paintings within an area that’s only 10 square kilometres!

While the paintings were created over millennia, most were made by the San Bushmen, an ancient society that until recently lived nomadic hunter-gatherer lives throughout Southern Africa. It was a key part of San culture to paint and carve animals, humans, and simple patterns on rocks, especially as part of religious trance dances. Their rock art therefore bears incredible spiritual, cultural, and historical weight.

Visitors can go on guided tours of the rock paintings of Tsodilo Hills to learn about this important part of Botswanan, and indeed Southern African, history.

7. Botswana is the size of France but has under 3 million people

Botswana is one of the world’s emptiest countries when it comes to people. For comparison, it’s slightly larger than Metropolitan France, which has a population of nearly 70 million as of 2026. But Botswana has under three million citizens. Its capital and largest city, Gaborone, only has a quarter of a million people!

The main reason for Botswana’s low population density is that so much of it is desert. Most Batswana live in the greener eastern strip of land near Gaborone.

One of the great delights of visiting Botswana as a tourist is that you enjoy so much open space, solitude, and clean air. Also, you’re on a high plateau where there’s almost no light pollution, so the clarity of the stars and Milky Way is captivating.

8. Botswana is the stablest country in mainland Africa

Botswana doesn’t generally get the airtime it deserves for being such a showcase of democracy and stability. Not just in Africa, but anywhere. But that’s perhaps in keeping with its vibe; it’s not a loud or braggy sort of nation. It doesn’t throw its weight around. It quietly gets on with its own business, which includes doing important conservation work and offering exceptional – and exceptionally safe – tourism experiences. At least that’s my take from my seat in neighbouring South Africa.

Not only is Botswana one of the safest nations in Africa, but it’s also been that way for 60 years. Ever since gaining independence from Great Britain in 1966 (and changing its name from Bechuanaland to Botswana), it’s maintained a steady course. No coups. No wars, civil or otherwise. And no explosively negative headlines. Just a country with solid laws where women can walk around safely at night, and it really is only the wildlife that you need to watch out for.

9. Botswana means ‘place of the Tswana people’

Around 79% of the population of Botswana (so around 1.1 million people) are ethnically Tswana and speak Setswana as their mother tongue. So it’s pretty apt that the country’s name means ‘place of the Tswana people’. (Note that when talking about the people of Botswana, you refer to them as Batswana, or Motswana when referring to one person.)

The second-largest ethnic group in Botswana is the Kalanga, at around 11%. The San Bushmen, whom I mentioned in connection with the Tsodilo Hills rock art, constitute around 3% and are locally called the Basarwa. The remaining 7% consist of smaller minorities, including descendants of European settlers.

So there you have it. Nine facts about Botswana that I hope you found interesting, useful, or inspiring! If you’re keen to learn more about Botswana or plan a visit, please take a look at the video, tours, and related reading shared below.

Note: This blog post was created by Leandra Slabbert in September 2024. It was completely rewritten by Megan Abigail White in July 2026.