Bechuanaland

”By the time Bechuanaland became independent 1966, under the name Botswana, it was one of the poorest coutries in the world; it had at total of twelve kilometers of paved roads, twenty-two citizens who had graduated from university, and one hundred from secondary school. To top it all off, it was almost completely surrounded by the white regimes of South Africa, Namibia and Rhodesia, all of which were hostile to independent African countries run by blacks. It would have been on few peopleś list of countries most likely to succeed. Yet over the nex forty-five years, Botswana would become one of the fastest-growing countries in the world. Today Botswana has the highest per capita income in sub-saharan Africa, and is at the same level as succesful European countries such as Estonia and Hungary, and the most succesful Latin American nations, such as Costa Rica.”

Ur Why Nations fail av Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson.