A Country of Farmers: The Social History of Indigenous Knowledge and Rural Development in Botswana

Abstract

This paper explores the varied and nuanced ways in which rural farming communities in Botswana have
engaged with their environments for generations. For these farming communities, interaction with the
physical environment is not just a narrow imperative to exploit material resources. Rather, the physical
environment is a platform upon which social identities are organically constructed. The paper takes a
socio-environmental perspective to the study of rural development in Botswana. Rural development,
it argues, should be studied from the vantage point of the local communities in order to tap into their
ideas, technologies and practices. The paper challenges the elitist rural development approach whereby
very little about the ideas and technologies of the local rural communities is documented. The fi rst
part of the paper provides the history of the received knowledge about farming in Botswana, and how
this impacted on indigenous systems of cattle keeping. The second part draws from historical insights
to argue that social research should engage with the various forms of community knowledge about
the environment in order to inform rural development policy in the country. The last part suggests
methodologies, discursive and practical, of doing research on the interaction between ecosystems and
rural development.