User:Azacaria/sandbox

Background
Botswana is located in the center of South Africa, in between Zambia, Namibia and Zimbabwe. Botswana is part of the Kalahari desert, approximately 70% of the country is based here. .It was once a part of the British protectorate, before it gained its independence in 1966 under a commonwealth. Since then, Botswana has been able to see strong development in humanitarian, social growth and economic growth. Most of their economic growth is due to their production of diamonds, which allowed it to become an upper middle-class country.. It is currently home to 2.3 million people.

Relation with World Bank
The goal of the world bank is to consolidate Botswana’s progress while also looking at a range of areas and noting its problem areas. Botswana is a strong US ally and has consistently worked with the world bank to create projects. Botswana first joined the organization on July 24, 1968, which was only 2 years after it gained independence. Its first major project with the World Bank was a Roads and Water project, which was to develop the transportation system in the city of Bechuanaland. Since then, it has looked towards the world bank to fund other projects that encompass the world bank’s mantra. As of recently, Botswana has 2 major projects. One is the Integrated Transport Project, estimated to cost $186 million, and the Emergency Water Security and Efficiency Project, estimated to cost $145.5 million. Both were introduced in March 2017 and are currently being worked on.

Apart from the World Bank utilizing its funding mechanisms in Botswana, it also provides analytical and advisory support. The World Bank conducted 3 projects that coincide with one another, they incorporate electricity transmission, economic diversification and strengthen public sector performance.

In relation the World Bank’s private sector, being the International Finance Cooperation (IFC), they have 2 projects in the works. There is the IFC Kgalagadi Bond, which will turn the Botswana Building Society into a full service, commercial bank. The other project looks at the water sector and it aims to have advisory support for the Glen Valley Waste Water Treatment Plan.

Country Partnership Framework
Botswana currently has a Country Partnership Framework for the FY16-FY20, which is the World Bank’s way to make their, “country driven model more systematic, evidence-based, selective and focused on the bank’s goals of ending extreme poverty and increasing shared prosperity .” The main areas for this framework is promoting private sector jobs, strengthening assets and having effective resource management.

The Botswana National HIV/AIDS Prevention Project
Botswana was experiencing one of the most severe HIV/AIDS epidemics of the world in the early 2000s. The Botswana government was in a state of “emergency” and the World Bank allowed them to make the transition to a more strategic and sustainable approach. The main points of this project was to strengthen the National AIDS agency’s institutional management and coordination capacity and the second was to finance strategic and innovative HIV/AIDS related prevention. The total cost of the project was $50 million and it ended in 2015.

The Northern Botswana Human Wildlife Coexistence project
Botswana wanted a way to mitigate human and wildlife to prevent interventions in certain rural communities, especially in Northern Botswana. Through this project, the government of Botswana was able to provide job opportunities in wildlife-based tourism to benefit the conservation of wildlife. This project was introduced in 2009 and ended in 2016. The cost of the project was $20.47 million.