Demographics of Botswana, Data of FAO, year 2005 ; Number of inhabitants in thousands.
Botswana, like many nations in southern Africa, suffers from a high AIDS infection rates, estimated in a 2002 UN report to be 38.8% for adults. This could be an exaggeration as the UN and other reputable international institutions wrongly estimated 20-25% HIV infection rates in neighboring South Africa up until 2002. These estimates were revised to 11% after the publication of the 2002 Nelson Mandela study of HIV/AIDS prevalence in South Africa [1]. The numbers quoted here about the demographic impact of AIDS in Botswana (such as negative population growth) should be approached with this qualification in mind. Demographic data from the 2001 Botswana census are included for comparison with 2006 CIA estimates.
Note: estimates for this country explicitly take into account the effects of excess mortality due to AIDS; this can result in lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality and death rates, lower population and growth rates, and changes in the distribution of population by age and sex than would otherwise be expected.
Age structure
0-14 years: 38.3% (male 319,531/female 309,074)
15-64 years: 57.9% (male 460,692/female 488,577)
65 years and over: 3.8% (male 23,374/female 38,585) (2006 est.)