Community action/Botswana
The aim of this page is to recognise, celebrate and encourage the self-empowerment of community agency networks (CANs) and community groups' activism for climate, environment and many other sustainability topics across Botswana.
News
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We created the first AI-powered solar electricity backup system for houses in sub-Saharan Africa, The Conversation (Jan 25, 2022)
2009
2009 SEED Award winners: South Africa, Namibia and Botswana: "Biocultural protocols - community approaches to Access and Benefit Sharing". Civil society organizations have mobilized efforts to develop bio-cultural protocols with different local indigenous communities which will help to provide a model whereby local communities can share the benefits if local resources and expertise are developed for market purposes...United Nations Environment Programme, May 12
- Young South Africans take up sustainable agriculture for food security, climatechangenews.com (Jun 02, 2026) — Aquaponics is seeing a revival in South Africa’s schools, boosted by government support and climate concerns
- Introducing Katcha: An African Democratic Innovation Network, demnext.substack.com (Feb 19, 2026)
- One of Africa’s Most Important Water Sources Just Got Some Very Good News, insideclimatenews.org (Feb 05, 2026) — Angola’s vast highland wetlands feed rivers that deliver freshwater to millions. They just gained global recognition that could help keep it that way.
- Collaborative Finance (CoFi): rethinking finance for the commons, growingcommons.substack.com (Jun 07, 2026) — What finance looks like when communities build and govern it themselves, Michel Rauchs
- Radical change can lead to a fairer and greener world, says new report, positive.news (Jun 04, 2026) — A major new study argues that rising living standards, shorter working hours and a liveable climate are not competing dreams, but parts of the same future – if the world is willing to tackle extreme inequality
- Dutch kids declared the world’s happiest (again). Here’s why, positive.news (Jun 02, 2026) — Dutch children are consistently ranked the happiest kids in the developed world. What is the Netherlands getting right? And does the humble bike have something to do with it?
International events
[edit | edit source]Global or International events
July 2026 — Plastic Free July, plasticfreejuly.org- Jul 04, 2026 (Sat) — International Day of Cooperatives (CoopsDay), 1st Saturday of July. The celebration aims to showcase co-operatives’ role in building ‘inclusive, resilient, and sustainable communities’, coopsday.coop
- Jul 18, 2026 (Sat) — Mandela Day, global celebration 18 July annually, to honour the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela. A call to action for individuals, communities, and organisations to take time to reflect on Mandela's values and principles and to make a positive impact in their own communities, mandeladay.com
2021-2030, UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, International community action events
Each week 3 different short videos from across the world.
Community networks, Community action/Philippines, Arts, sport and culture / ...This week's featured UK videos / ... read more about Cosmolocalism
Environmental issues in Botswana
[edit | edit source]Botswana faces two major environmental problems: drought and desertification.
The United Nations Development Programme claims that poverty is a major problem behind the overexploitation of resources, including land, in Botswana. To help change this the UNDP joined in with a project started in the southern community of Struizendam in Botswana. The purpose of the project is to draw from "indigenous knowledge and traditional land management systems". The leaders of this movement are supposed to be the people in the community, to draw them in, in turn increasing their possibilities to earn an income and thus decreasing poverty. The UNDP also stated that the government has to effectively implement policies to allow people to manage their own local resources and are giving the government information to help with policy development. W
About Botswana
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Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70% of its territory being a part of the Kalahari Desert. It is bordered by South Africa to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west and north, Zambia to the north, and Zimbabwe to the northeast. With a population of slightly over 2.4 million people and a comparable land area to France, Botswana is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. While it is not enshrined by statutory law, Botswana is de facto the nation state of the Batswana people, who constitute nearly 80% of the population while legally undistinguished Kalanga people, who account for another 11%, are the single largest ethnic minority.
The Batswana ethnic group are descended mainly from Bantu-speaking peoples who migrated into southern Africa, including modern Botswana, in several waves before AD 600. In 1885, the British colonised the area and declared a protectorate named Bechuanaland. As part of the decolonisation of Africa, Bechuanaland became an independent Commonwealth republic under its current name on 30 September 1966. Since then, it has been a parliamentary republic with a consistent record of uninterrupted democratic elections, though dominated by the Botswana Democratic Party until 2024. As of 2024, Botswana is the least corrupt country in mainland Africa according to the Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International.
See also
[edit | edit source]| Authors | Phil Green |
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| License | CC-BY-SA-3.0 |
| Cite as | Philralph (2014–2025). "Community action/Botswana". Appropedia. Retrieved June 24, 2026. |