Serowe

The Bangwato village that produced Botswana’s first president — and the museum, the church and the cemetery that go with it.

Khama Rhino SanctuaryEastern Botswana

Tents pitched on red sand among thorn trees at a cattle post near Serowe, Botswana, photographed in December 2021. Photo: Ttakhwiri, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Serowe is where modern Botswana’s story is kept. It is the Bangwato village that produced Sir Seretse Khama, the country’s first president, and it holds the museum, the church and the royal cemetery that go with that. It is also, for most travellers, a short detour off the A1 that turns a long drive into something worth remembering.

In this guide

• Why Serowe matters
• Khama III Memorial Museum
• The royal cemetery, and asking first
• The London Missionary Society church
• Crafts and the Boithselo project
• Khama Rhino Sanctuary
• Visiting Serowe well

Why Serowe matters

Botswana Tourism records Serowe as the birthplace of the country’s founding father and first president, Sir Seretse Khama. That single fact carries most of the village’s significance, but not in the way a plaque would suggest.

Seretse Khama’s marriage to Ruth Williams was politically explosive in the late 1940s, and the tourism authority notes plainly that the resulting upheaval played out here, in this village. Serowe is not a monument to a settled national story; it is where an unsettled one was argued out, and it is more interesting for that.

It is also simply large. Serowe is among the biggest traditional villages in Botswana, a working place of cattle posts and households rather than a heritage site with a village attached.

Khama III Memorial Museum

The museum occupies a restored red Victorian building and is named for Seretse’s grandfather, Khama III. Botswana Tourism describes a collection of furniture, uniforms, correspondence and photographs chronicling the Khama family legacy and the history of Serowe.

Correspondence and photographs are the point. This is a documentary museum rather than a display of artefacts, and an hour spent reading here explains the twentieth century in Botswana better than anything else on the A1. Khama III is the same chief who travelled to London in 1885 with Sebele I and Bathoen I — the journey commemorated by the Three Chiefs Monument in Gaborone.

The royal cemetery, and asking first

Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams are buried in the royal cemetery, near the Ngwato totem, the duiker — phuti in Setswana.

The London Missionary Society church

The London Missionary Society church, with its tall steeple, remains an important landmark in Serowe. The LMS presence here is the same missionary thread that runs through Kolobeng and Livingstone’s work further south, and it is part of why the Khama family’s history and the church’s history are hard to separate.

Crafts and the Boithselo project

At the Boithselo project, Bakgalagadi and San makers produce what Botswana Tourism describes as attractive and unique products. As with the craft shop at the Supa Ngwao Museum in Francistown, buying here puts money directly into the hands of the people who made the thing.

Khama Rhino Sanctuary

The reason many travellers stop at Serowe at all is the sanctuary a short distance away. It is a community trust, it holds both black and white rhino, and it is the most reliable rhino viewing in Botswana.

Botswana Tourism’s two pages disagree on how far it is — the Serowe page says 40 km north, the sanctuary’s own page says 20 km — and on when it was founded. We set out both readings on Khama Rhino Sanctuary rather than picking one.

Taken together, Serowe and the sanctuary make a genuinely good day: a morning in the museum and an afternoon or dawn drive with rhino, on a road most people treat as dead mileage.

Visiting Serowe well

Serowe sits west of the A1, a modest detour between Gaborone and Francistown. Roads are tar and an ordinary car is fine.

Treat the village as a village. It is large, busy and residential, the kgotla is a working institution, and the courtesies that apply elsewhere in Botswana apply here with more force because so much of what visitors come to see is family history rather than public heritage. Ask before photographing people, and ask before the graves.

Accommodation is limited in the village itself, with more at the sanctuary. We publish no rates, availability or ratings — start at accommodation in Botswana. On timing, the seasonal logic that matters here is the sanctuary’s rather than the museum’s, and it is set out on best time to visit Botswana.

Official sources

• Botswana Tourism Organisation — Serowe (Seretse Khama’s birthplace, the Ruth Williams marriage and its local impact, the royal cemetery and the duiker totem, permission to visit, Khama III Memorial Museum, the LMS church, the Boithselo project, the sanctuary)
• Botswana Tourism Organisation — Climate (seasons and rainfall)

Reviewed August 2026. Museum hours and access to the royal cemetery change; if something here is out of date, tell us.