ABSTRACT
Most of Botswana's population of some 1.5 million live in rural areas and less than one-third were officially classified as ‘urban’ in 1996. A. Larsson developed a set of keywords to describe different aspects of traditional and modern housing in order to gain a better understanding of the transformation process relating to rural–urban migration. A detailed analysis of the living conditions in low-income urban housing areas in Botswana showed that over 40 per cent of the sample households had to pay rent for their dwellings — even for temporary shelters and backyard shacks made from cardboard, plastic or corrugated iron sheets. The relative unimportance of urban subsistence agriculture makes the purchase of food inevitable. But the necessity to have cash available is aggravated by the fact that food is expensive in Botswana’s cities. To manage the change in economic conditions, that is, the increasing importance of monetary income and assets, most rural-urban migrants have to develop numerous survival strategies.
