Whanganui's Land Based Training (LBT) won the tender, partly with the help of Hamish Bowie, who went to Wanganui Collegiate School, has connections with aid and now lives in the Botswana capital, Gaborone.
LBT first scoped the project, spending two weeks in Botswana and talking to a lot of people and groups - Agriculture Ministry staff, universities, herdsmen, women, youth, the one meat company.
It decided to use an existing Agriculture Ministry training facility at Ramatlabama, near the border with South Africa, as a teaching base.
Seabelo Molefhi was chosen as head tutor, and three more tutors are being trained to ensure the project will continue.
Courses began there in January 2015, and 101 students finished them that year. This year's students are half way through the same learning.
Cattle farming is done completely differently in Botswana, but LBT operations manager James Towers said the African students were already excited about trying new methods.
He visited some who were trained last year and already teaching others and growing crops for their cattle.
Botswana's director of animal production Dr T.K. Phillemon-Motsu and Mr Molefhi are now spending 10 days in a quick tour of New Zealand cattle farms. They visited farms in Whanganui and Taihape last week and were amazed at what they saw.
Botswana is a large, flat, dry country in southern Africa, 70 per cent desert. It's a country where a truck driver who stops to relieve himself can be eaten by a python, with his idling truck only found days later.
Land is 70 per cent communally owned, with the owners having rights to use water bores. There are not many commercial farms. Most cattle owners have less than 50 cows that wander with herdsmen on the common land. Overgrazing happens and 25 to 35 per cent die of starvation in droughts. Their calving rate is only 45 per cent.
Mr Molefhi said farmers needed to learn to calculate how much feed their cattle needed, and provide it. They were fond of their cattle and didn't cull unproductive ones.
Cattle were like currency in Botswana, with Mr Molefhi working towards accumulating eight cows so he can get married.
In New Zealand, the visitors went to places which have been in drought, and where cattle were still alive because feed had been stored up for them. They saw 93 per cent calving rates on a Taihape farm.
In Botswana, farmers are just starting to find ways to fence land and grow crops they can store to feed their cattle.
LBT is encouraging the meat company to pay more for animals, so that unproductive ones are culled. Smaller and more efficient breeds are being used.
It's early days yet but the prospects look good, Mr Towers said.
