Botswana

Botswana: Stable Governance Scores Paired With a Sizable Defense Allocation

Botswana's GDP reached $19.40 billion in 2024, with GDP per capita of $7,696 and a population of 2,521,139, per World Bank WDI data. V-Dem's 2025 wave scores the country at 0.665 for electoral democracy and 0.52 for liberal democracy, with a state capacity score of 0.822 — figures that sit toward the upper end of V-Dem's 0-1 scale.

SIPRI's 2025 Milex data recorded military expenditure of $614.4 million, equivalent to 3.108 percent of GDP under SIPRI's own GDP series; this ratio should not be recomputed against the World Bank GDP figure above, as the two series diverge. The Correlates of War National Material Capabilities dataset recorded 9,000 active-duty personnel in 2022 and assigned a CINC score of 0.00020618571 for the same year.

On fiscal and external position, the IMF's World Economic Outlook projects government debt at 47.0 percent of GDP for 2026, and IMF International Financial Statistics data recorded reserves of $3.50 billion as of 2025. Both figures are drawn from the same 2025-2026 IMF reporting window as the rest of this bundle's fiscal data, so they can be read together without the dating caveats that affect some of the series below.

The Correlates of War CINC score of 0.00020618571 is a measure of Botswana's fractional share of global material capability in 2022, built from population, military personnel, and industrial inputs across the full international system; it is not a standalone index of regional strength and should be read alongside, not instead of, the personnel figure above.

Energy

Our World in Data figures put primary energy consumption at 0.0849 exajoules in 2023 and electricity generation at 3.43 terawatt-hours in 2024. Both oil and gas production are recorded at 0.0 terawatt-hours, dated 2016.

Data Gaps

The oil and gas production entries reflect no domestic output as of the 2016 reading available in this bundle, but the decade-old dateline means they cannot confirm the current state of play. The 2026 government debt figure is an IMF projection, not a realized outturn, and should be treated accordingly. No conflict-event or alliance data, and no armed-forces equipment detail beyond the personnel count, are present in this bundle.

Sources: World Bank WDI, IMF WEO, IMF IFS, SIPRI Milex, Correlates of War NMC, V-Dem v15, Our World in Data (Energy).