Thomas Tlou

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Thomas Tlou is a Botswana academic and historian, and former representative of Botswana at the United Nations.

Tlou studied at Johns Hopkins and Wisconsin universities in the US. In 1971 he joined the University of Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland, the fore-runner of the University of Botswana, to teach history. He left academia to perform government service and from 1976 to 1980 was Botswana's permanent representative at the United Nations.

Tlou was the first Motswana (Botswana citizen) to be vice-chancellor of the University of Botswana, serving from 1985 to 1998. Thereafter he continued at the university as professor of history, finally retiring in 2005.

Tlou has also been chair of the Association of Commonwealth Universities and served on the executive board of the Association of African Universities. In Botswana he has served on the Tertiary Education Council and as of 2005 he was chair of the Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis.^[1]

He is married to Professor Sheila Tlou, Botswana's minister of health and a former associate professor of nursing at the University of Botswana.

[edit] Awards

In 2006 Tlou was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Cape Town^[2] He has also received the Botswana Presidential Order of Honour, and was made a Chevalier dans L'Ordre des Palmes académiques by France.

[edit] Works

Tlou has written or co-written many of the standard texts on Botswana history.

Tlou, Thomas; Campbell, Alec (1997). History of Botswana, 2nd edition, Gaborone: Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-36531-3.
Tlou, Thomas; Parsons, Neil and Henderson, Willie (1995). Seretse Khama, 1921-1980. Macmillan.
Tlou, Thomas (1985). A History of Ngamiland: 1750 to 1906. Macmillan.