10 Oct 2017

Botswana represented the last of ‘Old Africa’ due to her rich natural heritage.

Speaking at The Photographic journey of Botswana initiative in the Makgadikgadi, a representative from the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organiation (UNESCO) Dr Richard Silberberg said Botswana had represented his first trip to Southern Africa.

He said up until then his knowledge of wildlife on the African continent was based on working in East Africa.

“After the grandeur of the savannas in Kenya and Tanzania, much of northern Botswana appears, to the uninitiated, like a featureless scrub.

There are no mountains like Kilimanjaro looming over the land, or spectacles like the congregation of a million wildebeest on the open plains of Serengeti”. Said Dr Silberberg

 Dr Silberberg further said what Botswana had the true wildness, which was often compared to some nostalgia, to the way East Africa was thirty years ago - before the tremendous pressure of population growth, commercialisation of the safari industry and before trophy hunting and  poaching became a major force.

“Botswana many say represents the last of ‘Old Africa’.

And in the heart of this arid land lies a place as aspiring and incongruous as the snow-capped summit of Kilimanjaro rising on the equator - the Okavango Delta, one of the greatest wetlands on earth; its very existence in the middle of the Kalahari desert is nothing short of miraculous.” Said Dr Silberberg.

Dr Silberberg further encouraged government of Botswana to equip its citizenry with the right equipment to be able to take initiative and market their country to the outside world by means of photography, journalism and other means of multimedia, adding that to others not yet familiar with this part of the world, the very notion that a place as wild as the Okavango Delta or the Makgadikgadi Pans existed was like a dream.

Dr Silberberg concluded that Botswana represented ‘Old Africa’ on a grand scale, but also afforded perhaps the best opportunity on the continent in ensuring that the glory of wildlife would be part of ‘New Africa’ for that was the dream that was worth to be shared.  BOPA