Topography

Botswana lies landlocked in the heart of southern Africa, straddling the Tropic of Capricorn covering about 585,370km2, of which about two-thirds is in the tropics. Most of Botswana is a gently undulating sandsheet with an altitude of between 900m and 1,300m. This is punctuated by occasional isolated rock outcrops, which are rarely more than 100m tall. Two major features stand out from this: the enormous Salt Pans and the huge inland delta of the Okavango River.

A relatively narrow corridor of land on the southeast side of Botswana is rockier and less flat than the rest, with sandstone and granite hills leading down to the Shashe, Limpopo and Marico rivers. This land is much more suitable for agriculture, and is where most of the country's population is concentrated.