Country Guide

This large but very sparsely populated country lies in the centre of southern Africa and is surrounded by Namibia and Zimbabwe on the north and by South Africa on the east and south.

Its weather and climate are like the western interior of South Africa - it is a region of low rainfall, largely desert and scrubland with a low and unreliable rainfall, being a part of the great Kalahari desert. What rain there is tends to come in the summer or warm season. Winters can be quite chilly with occasional frost.

Annual rainfall decreases westwards and southwards. The climatic table for Francistown is representative of the wetter north and east. Here mean annual rainfall is usually over 400 mm/16 in but in the west and south it falls below 200 mm/8 in.