The Supa Ngwao Museum is Francistown's most worthwhile stop and one of the better regional museums in Botswana. Its name means "show the heritage" in Kalanga, and it takes that mandate seriously. The permanent collection covers the Tati Gold Rush of the 1860s — one of the first in southern Africa — with mining equipment, photographs, and documents from the concession era. A separate wing focuses on the Kalanga people, the dominant local group, with exhibits on traditional crafts, initiation ceremonies, and oral history.
The museum occupies a building near the city centre and is open Tuesday to Saturday. Entry is cheap and the staff are genuinely knowledgeable; if you ask questions they tend to give real answers rather than canned explanations. Budget an hour to go through it properly.
story: > The Tati Gold Rush of the 1860s drew prospectors to this corner of southern Africa more than two decades before the Witwatersrand fields near Johannesburg were discovered. The yields proved modest and the rush faded quickly, but it left behind a town — and the museum's collection preserves letters and equipment from men who came hoping for fortunes and mostly left with calluses.