Country profile - BWA

Corruption in Botswana

10 sub-national regions - 1995-2022. Latest country-level SCI: 68 (2022).

Grand: 50.7 Petty: 86.1 Latest observed: 2019

Botswana: key corruption facts

The most corrupt region of Botswana is North-East (62.2/100), and the least corrupt is Ghanzi (74.9/100), on a 0-100 scale where 0 is most corrupt and 100 is least. All 10 regions are ranked below.

  • In 2022, Botswana's national Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) was 68/100, on a scale where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 the least corrupt.
  • Most corrupt region: North-East (SCI 62.2/100, 2022).
  • Least corrupt region: Ghanzi (SCI 74.9/100, 2022).
  • Grand corruption (SGCI): 50.7/100; petty corruption (SPCI): 86.1/100 (last directly observed in 2019).
  • Trend: Botswana's SCI moved from 75.9/100 (1995) to 68/100 (2022).
  • Coverage: 10 regions, 1995–2022. Source: Subnational Corruption Database (Crombach & Smits, 2024, Nature Scientific Data), CC BY 4.0.

How Botswana compares: SCD vs. the CPI and World Bank

The Subnational Corruption Index is scored 0–100 on the same orientation as Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (higher = cleaner). The difference: the CPI and the World Bank measure the perceptions of experts and business executives and report one national number, while the SCI is built from what ordinary households perceive and experience — and it breaks Botswana into 10 regions.

Index Latest Scale Based on
Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) 68 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Households — perception & experience
Transparency International CPI 60 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Experts & business surveys
World Bank Control of Corruption 0.7 ≈ −2.5 to 2.5 Aggregated expert sources

Most recent year — SCI 2022, CPI 2022, CCI 2022. The SCD also publishes region-anchored SUB-CPI and SUB-CCI series so the CPI and World Bank measures can be read at the regional level.

SCI trajectory - 1995-2022

Country-level mean of the Subnational Corruption Index, averaged across all 10 regions. Higher values mean cleaner governance (0 = most corrupt, 100 = least corrupt).

80 60 1995 2022

Source: SCD v1.0 (Comprehensive Dataset). Years where the panel was filled by inter/extrapolation are included in the country mean.

Regions (10)

Each row is a sub-national region with its latest SCI score. Click into any row for the region's full time series.

# Region GDL code Years Latest SCI
1 North-East BWAr106 1995-2022 62.2
2 South-East BWAr108 1995-2022 63.3
3 Kweneng BWAr105 1995-2022 66.7
4 Chobe BWAr110 1995-2022 66.9
5 Kgalagadi BWAr103 1995-2022 68.2
6 Southern BWAr109 1995-2022 68.6
7 Central BWAr101 1995-2022 68.9
8 Kgatleng BWAr104 1995-2022 70.4
9 North-West, Ngamiland BWAr107 1995-2022 70.7
10 Ghanzi BWAr102 1995-2022 74.9

Download Botswana

Per-country panel slice in CSV format. Columns: iso, country, gdl, region, year, sci. Direct dataset citations should reference the Figshare deposit (see How to cite).

Download BWA.csv