Gaborone shopping splits three ways: hand-coiled Ngamiland baskets on Main Mall tables, air-conditioned malls stocked with Botswana labels, and village workshops at Oodi and Gabane where the weaving and pottery happen. Prices in pula; cash still wins.
The pedestrian spine between Parliament and the Civic Centre is lined with trestle tables of Ngamiland palm baskets, carved wooden bowls, beadwork and Setswana-print cloth. Traders set up from about 08:00 and thin out after 17:00.
The country's oldest bookshop sits at the western end of the Main Mall and stocks Setswana-English dictionaries, Botswana Society history titles, local school readers and maps you will not find outside the country. Mon-Fri 08:00-17:30, Sat to 13:00.
A long-running craft marketing house that buys straight from rural weaving groups and San craft collectives, so the basket wall, ostrich-eggshell jewellery and Kalahari bows and quivers carry village labels and fixed, non-haggled prices.
Gaborone's 1970s arcade off Nelson Mandela Drive is quieter than the new centres: fabric shops selling wax print by the six-yard piece, tailors who turn a shirt around in a day, cobblers and small electronics kiosks.
The Tlokweng Road centre is Gaborone's boutique cluster: South African and Botswana fashion labels, Exclusive Books, a jeweller's row working with local diamonds, and craft kiosks in the walkway between the anchor stores.
A nursery and homeware shop with a shaded tea garden attached, selling potted aloes and succulents, ceramic planters, woven grass mats and jars of local honey and marula preserve — a good lunch stop that doubles as a gift run.
The largest centre in the country, under Kgale Hill on the Lobatse Road, with roughly 100 stores across fashion, sportswear, homeware and electronics, plus craft traders working the entrance concourse most afternoons.
Newer and lower-key, on the road to Sir Seretse Khama International, with a craft and curio wing, a jewellery cluster selling Botswana-cut diamond and silver pieces, and late trading that suits a last evening before a flight.
A weaving cooperative in Oodi village, about 15 km northeast, running since the 1970s. Women work upright looms in the open workshop, turning karakul wool into wall tapestries that narrate village life, harvests and cattle drives.
An artists' centre in an old house in the Village, with studios, a small gallery and a sales room of paintings, prints and sculpture by Botswana artists. Prices are set by the makers and a share goes straight back to them.
A workshop in Gabane village west of the city where potters throw and fire stoneware from local clay — mugs, bowls, lamp bases — alongside a leather and metalwork section. You can watch the wheel before you buy.
Fifteen kilometres south on the Lobatse Road, the reserve's shop sells reserve-branded canvas, wildlife prints, beadwork and San craft, with proceeds funding the education centre. Reliable last stop for gifts that are not mall stock.