The unseen investments in Ngamiland
Otlarongwa Kgweetsi | Monday June 30, 2025 06:00
But beyond the souvenir stalls and cattle posts, something more fundamental is unfolding. It is not a new airstrip or a five-star resort. It is not even something you can see from the roadside. It is access to healthcare, finally, quietly, expanding in a part of the country that has too often gone without.
And behind that expansion, perhaps surprisingly, is the Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA).
In the public imagination, CEDA has long stood as the go-to financier for small livestock farmers, transport operators, and youth-led startups. Its name evokes grant-loans, business plans, and sometimes red tape.
What it has not been widely associated with until recently is healthcare. But in Ngamiland, where critical health services have historically meant long-distance referrals and logistical acrobatics, that is beginning to change.
The shift is not loud. There are no glossy campaigns declaring the agency’s new focus. But in Maun, the evidence is already at work, citizen-owned medical facilities staffed, stocked, and open thanks in part to CEDA loans that dared to go where few expected them to.
It is not just a change in geography, it is a change in philosophy.
During a recent media tour to the region, members of the press were given a glimpse into what this shift looks like in practice. Whilst details of the private facilities receiving funding were kept appropriately focused on broader development themes, one thing became clear, CEDA is no longer simply backing businesses. It is beginning to back systems, systems that sustain life, reduce inequality, and quietly rewrite the boundaries of state-enabled services.
And it is doing so in a region that needs it most.
Ngamiland, with its vast distances and scattered settlements, presents a unique healthcare challenge. For many years, services such as dialysis, emergency surgery, or post-operative care were simply out of reach for the average resident.
Those who could afford it made arrangements in the South. Those who could not, often went without. Even with the presence of public facilities, the pressure on the system was and remains immense. What CEDA’s new wave of investment does is not replace that system, but reinforce it. It gives room for private providers to grow, for skills to stay, and for choice to enter a space where there was little before.
In doing so, it answers a development question that has lingered too long, what happens when infrastructure is not just about roads and power lines, but about people and their bodies?
For many, the answer is beginning to emerge not in slogans, but in service. A woman in Toteng can now receive treatment closer to home.
A man in Sehithwa can access diagnostics without losing two days to travel. And a young nurse from Maun can apply her skills in her hometown, rather than migrating south.
The significance is deeper than convenience. It is about dignity.
What makes the story more compelling is that these shifts are being driven by local actors, health professionals, business owners, and administrators who believed in the potential of private healthcare in remote regions.
But belief alone is not enough. Equipment costs money. Compliance takes time. Medical personnel require salaries, systems, and certainty. This is where CEDA’s involvement becomes pivotal. Not as a hero in the narrative, but as an enabler, an institution willing to fund the kind of risk that carries public value.
Of course, this model is still in its early stages. Challenges remain. Delays in government reimbursements to facilities serving public patients can put a strain on cash flow. Infrastructure gaps still exist in the form of roads, telecommunications, and reliable utilities. And with the rising demand for services, the question of long-term sustainability looms large.
But what is clear is that the precedent has been set.
Ngamiland now stands as a test case for what targeted financial support can do when aligned with regional development needs. It shows that with the right mechanisms in place, citizen-owned healthcare ventures cannot only survive they can serve.
In a quiet moment during the tour, one journalist looked out across the Thamalakane River and remarked: “I never thought a CEDA story would lead us here.” It was a telling observation.
Healthcare is not where most expect to find the agency’s footprint. But perhaps that is precisely why it matters.
Development does not always announce itself. Sometimes, it arrives in a bed that did not exist a year ago. In a nurse who no longer has to leave. In a patient who no longer needs to choose between treatment and travel.
In Ngamiland, CEDA has not just funded new businesses. It has made space for new stories, ones that begin, not in boardrooms, but in hospital wards and consultation rooms, where the most important kind of progress takes place, the kind that saves lives.