Francistown is Botswana's second city and one of the oldest in the country, and its history sets it apart. Here, on the banks of the Tati River, southern Africa's first gold rush broke out around 1869, fifteen years before the famous Witwatersrand rush in South Africa. Gold prospectors from all over the world came to these hills, and the city grew out of that mining boom. It's named after a British prospector, Daniel Francis.
Today Francistown is no longer a gold town. It's a busy commercial and industrial centre and, above all, the great crossroads of the north-east. People pass through on their way from the south of the country to the Makgadikgadi salt pans and Maun, or towards Victoria Falls and Zimbabwe. It feels like a working city with few tourists, but it keeps traces of its mining past, a good museum on Kalanga culture and several interesting day trips nearby.
This practical guide presents Francistown for what it is: a comfortable stop on the route, with plenty of history. It covers what to see, including the Supa Ngwao Museum, Nyangabgwe Hill, the remains of the old mines, the Domboshaba Ruins and the Tachila Reserve. It also explains how to get around this road hub, where to eat and sleep, and how to make the most of a one-day stop before heading on to the salt pans, Chobe or the Zimbabwe border.
For centuries the Francistown area was the land of the Bakalanga people, and there is evidence of gold mining here long before Europeans arrived. In 1867 the German explorer Karl Mauch made the Tati River deposits known, and around 1869 southern Africa's first gold rush broke out, drawing prospectors from all over the world. The city took its name from Daniel Francis, a British miner who obtained concessions in the area and ran the Tati Concessions Company. The present town was founded in 1897 next to the Monarch mine. Our history page tells the full story, from the ancient gold of the Kalanga to the colonial mining town and today's commercial hub.
Read the full history ↓The political and human backbone of the country: the capital born with independence, the old gold town, the historic kingdom of the Bangwato and the rugged corner where three countries meet.
Read the history of The east and Gaborone →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Francistown's story begins long before the gold rush of the 19th century. The Tati River region, in the north-east of present-day Botswana, was for centuries the land of the Bakalanga people, who speak Kalanga and are related to the cultures of the Zimbabwe plateau. These communities were part of the Late Iron Age world linked to Great Zimbabwe and to the kingdoms of Butua and Torwa, which left impressive stone structures across the region, such as the nearby Domboshaba ruins.
What stands out is that the Bakalanga and their ancestors were mining gold long before Europeans arrived. The Tati hills hold old shafts and tunnels dug by African miners, who extracted the metal and fed it into the trade networks linking the interior of southern Africa with the Indian Ocean coast and, through it, with the Swahili, Arab and even Asian worlds. Gold from southern Africa had travelled those routes for centuries.
That ancestral mining would leave a curious mark on later history: when European prospectors arrived in the 19th century, they often used those very abandoned shafts to locate the gold seams. The 'new' gold of the Tati was, in fact, gold that local communities had known about and worked for a very long time.
The episode that gave rise to the town took place in the late 1860s. In 1867, the German explorer and geologist Karl Mauch (the same man who shortly afterwards would make the ruins of Great Zimbabwe known to the world) travelled through the Tati River area and publicised the existence of rich gold deposits, describing how the Bakalanga extracted the metal along the river. The news spread like wildfire.
Around 1869, southern Africa's first gold rush broke out, fifteen years before the famous Witwatersrand rush that would give rise to Johannesburg. Fortune seekers arrived from South Africa, Europe and elsewhere, drawn by the promise of Tati gold. Prospecting licences and concessions were granted, and the region filled up with mining camps. Among those who obtained licences in 1869 was a British prospector, Daniel Francis, who would eventually head the Tati Concessions Company, the company that controlled mining in the area.
The reality, however, turned out to be less dazzling than the myth: there was gold in the Tati, but not in the fabulous quantities many had dreamed of, and it was hard to extract. Even so, mining was enough to bring settlers, infrastructure and trade to the region, and to put the Tati on the map of southern Africa as one of its first gold frontiers.
Today's Francistown was formally founded in 1897 as a settlement next to the Monarch mine, in the heart of the Tati mining district, and took its name from Daniel Francis. The arrival of the railway linking South Africa with Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe), built in the late 19th century under the influence of Cecil Rhodes, was key: Francistown became an important station on that line and a service centre for the region's mines and settlers.
One peculiar feature of the area was the system of the 'Tati concessions' (Tati Concessions). Unlike the rest of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, where land was mostly communal, the Tati district came under the control of a private company, the Tati Concessions Company, which managed large tracts as private property following agreements with local chiefs and the colonial authorities. This special status shaped the history of land around Francistown for decades.
During the colonial period, Francistown grew as a small frontier town, with its main street (the historic Blue Jacket Street), its hotels, its general stores and its mixed population of Africans, Europeans and traders of various origins. It was a trading and mining outpost in an otherwise rural, cattle-farming territory, and one of the few urban centres in the Protectorate before independence.
With Botswana's independence in 1966, Francistown entered a new phase. Gold mining had lost its importance, but the city reinvented itself thanks to its strategic location: sitting at the crossroads of the routes linking the south of the country (and South Africa) with the north (the salt pans, Maun and the Delta) and with Zimbabwe, it became the main commercial, industrial and service centre of north-eastern Botswana, and the country's second city.
Botswana's post-independence economic 'miracle', driven by diamonds and prudent management, also benefited Francistown, which grew in population, trade and light industry. The city became a regional hub serving a wide rural hinterland and the flows of travellers and goods crossing into Zimbabwe at the nearby border. Its character, however, remained that of a working city rather than a tourist one.
Francistown also keeps its own cultural identity within Botswana: it is the heart of the Kalanga region, with its own language, music and traditions, distinct from the Tswana culture that predominates in the rest of the country. That identity finds expression in institutions such as the Supa Ngwao Museum and in celebrations such as the Domboshaba Cultural Festival, which champion Bakalanga heritage.
Today Francistown is a city of around 100,000 people that combines its historical past with its role as the main transport hub of north-eastern Botswana. Its streets and roads see the traffic of people travelling between Gaborone, the Makgadikgadi salt pans, Maun, Chobe and the Zimbabwe border, which makes it an almost unavoidable stop on many itineraries around the country. It is a lively commercial centre, with markets, shopping malls and a busy urban life.
For travellers, Francistown does not compete with Botswana's great natural destinations, but it offers a different and authentic experience: that of an African city of work and trade, with layers of history ranging from ancestral Kalanga mining and the stone ruins of Domboshaba to the 19th-century gold rush and the colonial Tati concessions. Its museum, its hill, its mining remains and its nearby excursions give substance to a one-day stop.
All in all, the history of Francistown (from the ancient gold of the Bakalanga to southern Africa's first gold rush, and from there to the commercial hub of today's prosperous Botswana) is a good reminder that the north-east of the country has a past as rich as its nature. Stopping here, even just in passing, means discovering a less familiar but very real side of Botswana.
