AIR BOTSWANA (BP)

Destination Highlight - ​Francistown

Air Botswana’s principal domestic route is between Gaborone and Francistown, Botswana’s second city and ‘Capital of the North’.  ​This busy commercial, industrial and transport hub is one of the oldest urban settlements in the country

​established during the gold rush of the late nineteenth century and named after pioneer prospector Daniel Francis.  The present town was founded in 1897, by the Bakalanga as a settlement near the Monarch mine and named after Daniel Francis, an English prospector from Liverpool who acquired prospecting licences in the region in 1869. Francis was a director of the Tati Land Concessions Land (Tati Concessions Company), which acquired the land from Chief Lobengula. The centre of the new town was formed when the company sold off 300 lots in August of that year. The Monarch mine was not the only mine in operation at that time, and it was widely believed that Francistown would grow rapidly.