Botswana is a nation of 1.5 million people occupying just over 600,000 square kilometers (231,600 square miles) in southern Africa, surrounded by South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Its developmental path and achievements are exceptional. During the nineteenth century, a small group of indigenous people gained control of the country's cattle, the lands on which the cattle ran, and supervision of the workers on those lands. This elite group used this control to extend their individual ownership of productive resources. A growing state system developed, too, on this basis prior to the colonial period.

The term kgosi describes a "chief" and a "rich man." Unlike Kenneth Kaunda (1924–1991), a peddler of used clothes who became the first president of the newly independent Zambia in 1964, or Tanzanian leader Julius Nyerere (1922–1999), who was a school teacher before obtaining high office at independence in 1961, members of the rising Botswana elite possessed both wealth and...