Botswana is another landlocked country, bordered as it is by Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia and South Africa. The population is only 1.6 million, with 190,000 people living in the capital Gaborone. It is sparsely populated as the Kalahari Desert occupies a large proportion of the 585,000 km~2 total land Botswana is largely a primary sector-dependent economy and the third largest producer of mineral products in Africa behind South Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. To reduce this dependency an intensive industrialisation programme was instigated in 1997 with particular emphasis on diamond mining. This now accounts for over 33% of GDP, earns around 80% of foreign exchange, 50% of government tax revenue and is the predominant economic activity.
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