Central District
BamaNgwato territory since the 1890s, now Botswana's largest district—diamond-rich but cattle-based, with Serowe still a "village" at 90,000 people. Boundaries don't follow economics.
Serowe, with 90,000 people, is still called a village—not administrative modesty but cultural memory frozen in place. This is BamaNgwato territory, where boundaries drawn in the 1890s still define political space today.
When British administrators asked Tswana chiefs to mark their territories in the 1890s, the BamaNgwato claimed the largest: stretching from the Kalahari west to the Zimbabwe border east, encompassing both fertile corridor and desert fringe. The boundaries weren't arbitrary colonial lines but traced the extent of Chief Khama III's authority over cattle posts, wells, and subject villages. When Khama moved his capital to Serowe in 1902, he chose defensibility over water—a hill commanding views across the plain, forcing dependence on distant wells. That calculated inconvenience kept the capital anchored when easier sites beckoned.
The district metabolized whatever the semi-arid land offered. Cattle adapted to drought, grazing patterns shifting with seasonal rains. Sorghum and millet required minimal water. Then diamonds: Orapa mine (1971) and Letlhakane (1976) pour wealth through the territory but employ few—most of Botswana's diamond billions flow to Gaborone while Central District residents still work cattle posts scattered across 147,000 km². The Serowe-Palapye rail corridor carries ore and beef, but the territory remains fundamentally pastoral.
Today 706,000 people inhabit Central District (2022 census), making it Botswana's most populous despite aridity. Serowe remains the beating heart—Africa's largest "village" is really a distributed network of traditional wards, each maintaining its kgotla (assembly place) rather than consolidating into urban grid. Cattle outnumber people. Palapye, the rail junction 70km north, handles logistics for mines feeding Gaborone's processing plants and farms feeding its tables. The district's GDP per capita sits below national average: diamond rents accrue elsewhere.
By 2026, Central District faces questions that metabolic scaling can't answer. Diamond revenues fund clinics and schools but create few jobs here. Young people leave for Gaborone or Francistown. Climate models predict intensifying droughts—already the 2015-2016 El Niño devastated cattle herds. Yet the same historical contingency that preserved Chief Khama's boundaries since the 1890s resists reorganization. Serowe will remain a "village" even if it hits 100,000 people. The territory persists because it always has.