The IAGR conference shifts to a new location with a new conference host and logo every year.

Our hosts, the Botswana Gambling Authority, designed this year’s conference logo (pictured above).

Read on to understand the story behind the logo.

The graphic aesthetic of the three gentlemen represents our Three Dikgosi Monument (pictured left).

This is a bronze sculpture located in the Central Business District of the capital city, Gaborone.

The statues depict our three dikgosi (tribal chiefs); Khama III of the Bangwato, Sebele I of the Bakwena, and Bathoen I of the Bangwaketse; who played important roles in Botswana’s Independence.

The three chiefs travelled to Great Britain in 1895 to ask Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, and Queen Victoria to separate the Bechuanaland Protectorate from Cecil Rhodes’ British South Africa Company and Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe).

Permission was granted and meant that the Batswana remained under direct British rule until independence in the 1960s.