North-West District

North-West District exists because the Okavango Delta exists—and the Delta exists because the Okavango River, flowing from Angola, reaches Botswana and finds nowhere else to go. The water spreads across 15,000 km² of flat Kalahari sand, creating the world's largest inland delta: seasonal wetland that floods, recedes, and floods again with precision that shapes everything from elephant migration to tourist bookings. The BaTawana claimed this territory in the 1890s not despite the water but because of it—it was resource in a region defined by thirst.

Maun, the district capital, sits on the southern edge of the Delta as gateway town. Founded 1915 as BaTawana tribal capital, it operated for decades as frontier outpost—remote, difficult to reach, economy based on cattle ranching and hunting concessions. The transformation began in the 1960s-1970s when Botswana government, flush with diamond revenues, chose conservation over extraction. Instead of draining the Delta for agriculture (as Egypt did the Nile marshes), Botswana created Moremi Game Reserve (1963) and later the Okavango Delta UNESCO World Heritage Site (2014). The decision reflected ecological mutualism: wildlife tourism would generate revenue without destroying the resource.

Maun became logistics hub for this economy. Safari operators cluster here; air charters fly from Maun Airport to remote camps; supplies flow through Maun's warehouses to lodges scattered across the Delta. The town's population (89,500 in 2025) lives almost entirely on tourism metabolism—guiding, hospitality, transport, provisioning. The seasonal pulse is visible: Delta floods May-October when Angolan rains arrive, tourist season peaks June-September, and Maun's economy expands and contracts with the water cycle. This is ecological succession playing out annually: floodwaters arrive, fish spawn, birds flock, herbivores follow, predators follow them, and tourists follow the predators.

By 2025, North-West District holds about 175,000 people, but wealth concentrates in Maun and tourism corridors. The rest remains cattle posts and fishing villages, practicing subsistence economies older than the tourist industry. The district's GDP outpaces Botswana's average thanks to high-value safari bookings—$500-1000 per night camps that cater to European and American visitors. Yet the industry exhibits fragility: drought in 2015-2019 reduced Delta flooding by 60%, panicking operators. COVID-19 in 2020-2021 collapsed tourist arrivals, and Maun's unemployment spiked to 40%. The district had no fallback—cattle and fishing can't replace safari revenues.

By 2026, North-West faces climate questions that ecological mutualism can't resolve. The Okavango's flow depends on Angolan rainfall, which climate models predict will decrease 10-20% by 2050. Upstream extraction pressures mount—Namibia and Angola both propose irrigation projects that would divert water before it reaches Botswana. The BaTawana boundaries remain, but the resource that defined them is under threat. Maun built its economy on a river that arrives from elsewhere, floods predictably, and sustains wildlife that tourists pay to see. When any link in that chain breaks, the mutualism collapses. The Delta survives for now, and so does North-West. Both depend on water arriving from a country that owes Botswana nothing.