BETP: Gamechanger or new wine in old skins?

Mbongeni Mguni | Thursday July 31, 2025 11:01

Every time President Duma Boko speaks, his strategic direction in terms of the agility and dynamism of the public service is clear. With urgent budget and economic challenges banging on his door, a short few years to accomplish them and the ever-louder demands of an impatient electorate, the President is a man on a mission.

The private sector is primed to not only help, but if allowed to, willing take the lead in transforming the economy in the medium to long term, as Business Botswana reiterated this week. Foreign investors, from whom Boko has hinted could be the source of $600 million in just a year, are equally comforted by the country’s stable institutions, A-grade credit ratings and massive potential.

The public service, the country’s single largest employer, is unavoidably the conduit between the private sector, foreign investors, their investments and the citizenry. Amongst many other duties, the public service facilitates via due diligences, assessments of intent and ability and – in the case of the budget – passes on allocations of the national cake to different priorities and needs in the economy.

It is ordinary officers in usually unremarkable offices who grease the wheels of commerce in the country by receiving and assessing applications and it is their superiors up the hierarchy who approve certificates, leases, permits, visas and others applications that make up “the ease of doing business”.

The civil service provides the regulations and supervision required for businesses to operate and for citizens to be protected from how businesses operate.

The modern civil service however is expected to do more – it is required to be innovative, creative and the hub of a results-based economy. One that does not stand in the way of business, innovation or creativity and rather partners with enterprise for the benefit of growth and the attainment of citizens aspirations.

And yet the country’s public service is frequently cited as a barrier to the “ease of doing business” and a major driver of poor project, policy and programme implementation in the country. The country’s civil servants, particularly those at the higher levels of the totem pole, are accused of holding onto archaic ways of thinking, deciding and doing that sap the vitality of the private sector and investors alike.

Because the new President and his government did not participate in the construction of the public service architecture over the years, they do not have the same sense of ownership of the “system” as the past administration did. Boko is not only happy but eager to dismantle the systems and attitudes that stand in the way of achieving his mandate.

Speaking at the recent launch of the Botswana Economic Transformation Programme (BETP), Boko announced his plans.

“I am here to announce and launch the development of the Botswana Economic Transformation Program, a grand mission to dismantle bureaucratic inertia and build a fast and fearless delivery economy. “We will in this transformation journey not crawl but sprint. “We will attract local and international investors with precision, purpose and a world-class, fully actionable execution framework,” he said.

He continued: “We are building a new Botswana, the second republic, where public service is not a gatekeeper of the past but a laboratory for forward-thinking policy, digital delivery and citizen-centric operational readiness.”

The BETP is Boko’s plan to finetune transformative projects to be included in the upcoming National Transformation Plan. The BETP, which will run for 12 weeks, involves a rigorous review of the country’s economic baseline, policy gaps, and execution bottlenecks, then identifying sectors with the greatest catalytic potential before embarking on a three-to-four week period of intense cross-sector engagement to convert ideas into execution-ready, investment-grade projects.

The final stage of the BETP will be execution which involves a clear roadmap, performance indicators, escalation protocols, and real-time government delivery mechanisms.

The projects will be impact-tested, feasibility-checked, costed and fed into the National Transformation Plan, as resulted-oriented drivers of growth, representing a new model of development planning for the country.

“We are replacing traditional process-heavy planning with a bold implementation-based model, one that begins with action, assigns responsibility and ends with results,” Boko said.

Essentially, the BETP is the new administration unveiling a shiny new, overhauled V8 engine capable of powering the economy and citizens to a transformed land of better developmental realities. Looking at the new engine, indeed it has all the mechanisms for power, agility, endurance, speed and overall performance.

But the vehicle the engine is in, is a cause for concern.

On Thursday, the President expressed some of these concerns.

“What is happening now in Botswana, arising from a realisation that the way we've configured our institutions, the way we have operated, our modes and patterns of behaviour and thought, will not get us where we want to get. They won't. “And I've said before, I want to say it now, government's biggest problem, and it's huge, government's biggest problem is government itself. “You say it privately, when you get here, you flatter. “Government's biggest problem is government itself, because government has difficulty being agile and responsive.”

According to Boko, government is wired in a way that makes it incapable of acting with speed or responding to issues in real time.

“And this has become so routinised, so normalised, it has ossified into a culture in government. “So when you come and you need licensing and go to a government department, the first thing you will get is either the person who is supposed to respond to your issue is unavailable, and may not be available for a long time, or for your license to be issued, there are several layers of bureaucracy through which you must go. “And it takes a lot of time; time we don't have. And this is normal.”

He continued: “And when you challenge these, you are told there's a policy, there's a law, this is what has to happen. “You can be told in government, you ask, ‘this investor says they can do this, and they can start in the next two weeks. Can you facilitate?’ You're told there's a process. “It will take a minimum of two years to decide whether this is an idea worth pursuing. And that's the law, that's the policy, that's practice. And everybody accepts this.”

Part of the changes Boko is introducing involve the introduction of a Presidential Delivery Dashboard where ministries will be required to provide weekly implementation progress and where each project will be timebound with measurable targets.

Key performance indicators will become mandatory and the President Vice President will report to the nation on the outcomes every quarter.

An attempt is being made to fix the vehicle in which the overhauled engine has been placed. Will it succeed where so many other efforts in the past have failed? Yesterday, Boko said the changeover in government was a catalyst for the change required in the public service’s culture.

“Part of the reason why it is important in the political history of this country for there to have been this kind of change is that somebody who is irreverent must come in and view all these processes, institutions, and configurations through the prism of an angry outsider. “That's what I have been for a very long time. Engaged, enraged. “And when you get in and you now face these challenges, it behooves you to effect change and effect it very quickly. “You must effect it quickly, you must effect it unapologetically. “And that's where we are, that's the moment in time where this country is now.”