Botswana Visa and Entry Requirements

Botswana is a straightforward entry for many nationalities and has one requirement that catches families out badly enough to be worth reading before you book anything. The rules below are the ones the British Foreign Office publishes for British passport holders. If you travel on another passport the shape will be familiar and the answer may not be.

Your passport

Your passport must be valid for at least six months after the day you arrive and must have at least three blank pages. Three is more than most countries ask and more than neighboring Zambia, so a passport that is fine for the rest of a Southern African trip can be short for this leg of it.

Make sure you are actually stamped in. An unstamped passport raises suspicions of illegal entry when you try to leave. If you hold two passports, enter Botswana on the same one you used to exit the country you came from.

Whether you need a visa

British passport holders can visit for up to ninety days without a visa. Overstaying, even briefly, causes delays on departure, and an extension has to be arranged with the Department of Immigration rather than at the airport.

Working, studying or volunteering are different categories with their own requirements, and volunteering in particular is not covered by a visitor entry. Check your own nationality and your own purpose against a Botswana mission before you travel.

Traveling with anyone under eighteen

This is the requirement that strands people, and it applies on the way in and on the way out. You must carry an original or certified copy of the full birth certificate of any child aged seventeen or under. Not a photocopy, and not the short form.

If either parent is not traveling, the absent parent must have signed an affidavit consenting to the child traveling. That takes time to arrange and cannot be fixed at a border post at seven in the morning.

The rule exists to make child trafficking harder and it is enforced. Treat it as a document to obtain weeks in advance, in the same category as the passport itself.

Money, vaccination and customs

You must declare foreign or local cash if it is worth ten thousand pula or more. Failing to declare it can lead to prosecution, so count what is in the bag before you reach the counter rather than after.

A yellow fever certificate is required if you are arriving from a country listed as a transmission risk, which several countries this publication writes about are. A connection through one can count. Botswana has also introduced entry restrictions including health screening for travelers arriving from regions affected by Ebola.

There are strict rules on what may be brought in or taken out, and anything that may be prohibited or dutiable has to be declared.