Botswana has experienced rapid economic growth and structural transformation that was being
driven by the profitable exploitation of diamonds. The macroeconomic environment has also
been conducive for economic growth and in line with current best practice. As a result of the
economic growth, good economic management, and stable political environment, the country has
made major strides in reducing absolute poverty from levels higher than fifty percent to the
current level of about 30%. The current poverty level is however still quite high to achieve the
goals of both Vision 2016(eradication of poverty) and Millennium development Goals (halving
poverty by 2015). The economy has remained structurally undiversified with a heavy reliance on
diamonds for output, revenue generation and export growth. As a result, unemployment has
remained very high even though it is currently declining. It is no doubt that the high
unemployment rate has made poverty reduction very difficult as most poor people resorted to
working in the low productive informal sector, which has over the years been growing
significantly3
.
Major efforts are however being made to tackle poverty in terms of policies and programmes.
Some of these are the implementation of the National Poverty Reduction Strategy adopted in
2003. The Government is currently in the process of working out strategies to mainstream the
poverty reduction strategy into national development planning with a view to implementing
those strategies in the coming National Development Plan (NDP 10). Part of the programme
involves making the programmes and policies pro-poor. The social safety nets were also
reviewed in 2006 with a view to improve their effectiveness and targeting. There are still major
challenges in terms of poverty reduction which have to do with how to reduce unemployment
given the structure of the economy; dealing with the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which is costly not
only in terms of loss to human resources but also in terms of the lost economic output from the
money being used to deal with the scourge. There are also challenges in terms of improving the
productivity of labour in some of the economic sectors that have a major bearing in terms of
poverty reduction, especially the agricultural sector whose output has been declining over the
years and yet it employs a significant number of Batswana. It has also not been an easy task to
industrialize as manufacturing has been very small even though a lot of resources were thrown
into the sector.