Botswana slips in Global Competitiveness rankings
Pauline Dikuelo | Monday June 23, 2025 14:00
The country has dropped to 59th position out of the 69 economic surveyed in 2025, falling from the 55th place out of the 67 countries in 2024.
The IMD report revealed that Botswana’s overall competitiveness score declined to 46.12 in 2025, compared to 50.31 recorded in the previous year, reflecting a drop in performance across key economic indicators.
The assessment evaluated national competitiveness based on four core pillars being economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency, and infrastructure. These indicators collectively determine a country’s ability to create and maintain an environment that sustains enterprise performance and long-term value creation.
Although three individual factors showed some score improvements, Botswana's rankings fell across all competitiveness dimensions. Botswana National Productivity Centre (BNPC) officials said the trend suggests that whilst Botswana made some progress, other countries advanced at a faster pace, thereby undermining Botswana’s relative standing in the global competitiveness landscape.
“The results also reflect the broader fiscal challenges currently facing the country including constrained public spending and limited resources to implement reforms that would enhance competitiveness,” the officials said.
In the area of business efficiency, Botswana improved its score from 33.39 in 2024 to 39.18 in 2025. However, its ranking declined slightly from 47th out of 67 countries to 48th out of 69.
“The labour market sub-factor remains a key strength, with Botswana achieving strong positions in indicators such as the proportion of women in management, female labour force participation, stock market capitalisation relative to GDP, minimum wage benchmarks, and compensation levels,” reads the report.
Despite these achievements, the country's overall business efficiency is hampered by poor performance in areas like talent attraction and retention, worker motivation, business agility, and risk response.
The IMD report further revealed that the country’s economic performance remained the weakest area. In 2025, the country was ranked last amongst all economies assessed, falling from 64th out of 67 countries in 2024. In 2025, the score dropped significantly to 12.47, down from 25.95 the previous year.
“The country performed poorly in critical sub-areas such as the domestic economy, international trade, and employment. Underlying these weaknesses are indicators including low export of goods, high export concentration by product, weak direct investment stock inflows, and a high unemployment rate,” BNPC officials noted.
In terms of infrastructure, Botswana ranked 59th out of 69 countries dropping two places from the previous year’s position whilst the health and environment sub-sector improved by two places in the rankings from 58th out of 67 in 2024 elevated to 56 out of to 69 in 2025, with renewable energies emerging as a notable strength ranking 16th globally.
Botswana faced significant shortcomings in technological readiness rankings, with internet bandwidth speed ranked near the bottom at 67th. Government efficiency also declined with Botswana falling from 38th out of 67 countries in 2024 to 41st out of 69 countries in 2025.