Gaberone — Mozambican President Armando Guebuza arrived in Gaberone on Monday afternoon for a two day official visit to Botswana, at the invitation of his Botswanan counterpart, Ian Khama.

Of particular symbolic and emotional importance is the visit Guebuza is scheduled to make to the house in Lobatse, some 85 kilometres south of Gaberone, where Mozambique's first President, Samora Machel, stayed as he made his way from Maputo (then known by its colonial name of Lourenco Marques) to Dar es Salaam, to join the recently formed Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO).

There are plans to turn the house into a museum, to keep alive the memories of revolutionary nationalists such as Samora Machel.

Guebuza is also scheduled to inaugurate a new psychiatric hospital in Gaberone, which will serve the entire SADC (Southern African Development Community) region.

He will also visit a diamond mine at Jwaneng, 165 kilometres west of Gaberone. Botswana is the world's largest producer of gem diamonds, and it is largely thanks to diamond mining that it now has the fourth highest GDP per capita in Africa.