Is there really anything that Botswana, a peaceful and relatively prosperous nation can possibly learn from our still relatively impoverished SADC partner? In the area of economic diversification, a question now vital to Botswana's future, there is much to learn from the willingness to undertake bold measures in order to transform itself and diversify its economic base. At the end of the civil war Mozambique was a shell-shattered economy, based largely on cashew nut exports.
What followed in Mozambique in the last two decades is little short of miraculous. Like Botswana, Mozambique experienced one of the highest rates of growth of any country in Africa. This is always the case for countries that begin from a low base- their growth rates always look impressive at first. In the period 1995-2009 Mozambique experienced the second highest growth rate in Africa over eight percent per annum. The only country to do better, and it shows a great deal about growth rates, was Rwanda which was recovering from an even lower base following the genocide in 1994.
