Building the evidence base for Indigenous reform
Without robust data on San population, land use, livelihoods and service access, policy reform has no empirical grounding — and bilateral funders have nothing to fund against. The data programme is the foundation on which every other workstream rests.
A seven-fold uncertainty
Estimates of Botswana's San population vary by a factor of almost seven. This range reflects not uncertainty, but the near-complete absence of systematic data collection — on population, on language, on land rights, on services.
Existing data is fragmented across Government ministries, Statistics Botswana, academic institutions and NGOs; it has never been integrated into a coherent analytical framework; and much of it is so outdated as to be misleading. No bilateral or multilateral funder will commit significant resources to a programme whose target population cannot be defined more precisely than a seven-fold range.
A three-phase workplan, 2026 – 2029
Audit, indicative census & gap analysis
- Full audit of extant ministerial and public datasets, identifying what is known, where the critical gaps lie, and what confidence can be placed in existing figures
- Indicative San census with Statistics Botswana — an updated, credible baseline disaggregated by geography, language group and livelihood type
- National land tenure audit — the foundational deliverable of the entire programme (see below)
- Costed Terms of Reference for new research to fill critical gaps, forming the basis for proposals to the Tenure Facility, ILO, UNICEF, IFAD and bilateral research funders
Targeted data collection & policy briefs
- Population demographics and language; land, livelihoods and economic inclusion; education, health and social protection indicators
- Baseline measures for governance and participation processes being established in parallel
- Costed policy briefs and programme proposals — grounded in real data — that bilateral and multilateral funders require before committing implementation finance
Monitoring framework & ongoing policy support
- M&E framework for Government, San organisations and funders to track whether reform commitments are being met
- Research briefs and costed intervention frameworks feeding into implementation finance proposals
- Permanent data and evidence capacity — held jointly by Statistics Botswana, relevant ministries, and Khwedom Council
The national land tenure audit
Land is not simply the primary grievance of San communities — it is the foundational issue from which all others flow. The loss of land and natural resources is the single most important driver of long-term marginalisation: it stripped communities of their only substantive capital assets, and it is the structural condition that limits every other development or welfare intervention.
The audit will document, for every settlement and relevant area: the formal statutory position (land board allocations, tribal land grants, existing instruments); customary and traditional use patterns recognised within communities; and — critically — the discrepancies between them. Land occupied or historically used by San that has been allocated to outsiders, registered fraudulently, lost through wildlife designations, or rendered inaccessible through CKGR game reserve status will all be mapped.
Outputs: community-level tenure profiles, a national synthesis report, a classification framework for tenure reform, and mapped spatial datasets suitable for legal proceedings, policy development and funder proposals.
Unlocking every other workstream
Policy reform
The National Indigenous Peoples Policy, RADP replacement framework and ILO 169 implementation legislation all require empirical grounding. The audit provides it.
CKGR restoration
Tenure mapping, ecological baselines and settlement profiles form the factual basis for the Heads of Agreement and the management plan.
Bilateral & multilateral finance
No serious funder will commit to a programme whose target population varies by a factor of seven. Credible data is the gate.
Accountability
A permanent monitoring framework allows San organisations, Government and funders to track whether reform commitments are actually being met.
USD 355,000 – 920,000 over four years
The budget scales with the ambition of new surveys commissioned. The programme is designed to attract dedicated research and data funding from the Tenure Facility, bilateral agencies and UN bodies. Without it, every other workstream operates in a factual vacuum.