Beyond pitching – The task of being investable
Lewanika Timothy | Tuesday September 9, 2025 17:03
When finance technocrats and audacious entrepreneurs met in Gaborone this week with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), everybody was out guns blazing, pitching hard. Their message was consistent; pitching a politically stable democracy, rich in minerals and ambition, that is open for business.
But beneath the diplomatic smiles and deal-making handshakes lies a more sobering question: Is Botswana truly ready to absorb all the billions it calls for effectively? For a country that has built its post-independence success story on cautious, measured governance, the next phase may not be just in attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) but also in developing the capacity to be investable.
In development and finance circles, Botswana enjoys a solid reputation. Prudent macroeconomic management, strong institutions, and a low corruption profile make it a darling of international partners. Yet, in the corridors of government and research institutes, questions are being raised about whether Botswana’s frameworks, human capital, and institutional systems can scale fast enough to handle the massive inflows being envisioned.
Last year, a draft report by the Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis (BIDPA) painted a worrying picture. The report revealed that Botswana’s flagship citizen enterprise development programmes were underperforming, creating few sustainable jobs and offering minimal returns to the state.
Specifically, the report showed that from 2017 to 2022, youth-funded enterprises backed by the Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA) numbered over 5,600, but collectively, they created just 7,700 jobs.
These numbers tell a larger story: capital alone does not create economic growth, capacity does.
Speaking at this week’s event, Minister of Finance and Vice President, Ndaba Gaolathe, said that the country was working on improving its project implementation models whilst also aligning national projects with international finance best practices.
“We want to make Botswana the best-managed country in Africa, but that will include working on our project execution models and ensuring that the capital we so desire is able to translate into value for our people,” he said.
To be investable means more than having mineral wealth or GDP growth potential. It means having the governance systems, project design capabilities, human resources, regulatory frameworks, and risk management mechanisms in place to ensure that every pula or dollar spent generates intended outcomes.
Local pension funds in Botswana have also asserted that they struggle to find investable domestic assets, despite regulatory shifts that require increased onshore investment. There have been complaints over changes to pension fund rules that changed the amount of the assets required to be invested locally from a minimum of 30% to 50%.
Pension funds said there remains no easy route for them to deploy these repatriated assets, largely because there is no standalone Public Private Partnership Bill or dedicated infrastructure fund, forcing much of this capital to linger in money market and bank holdings rather than productive sectors.
Furthermore, Mmegi has also previously reported that pension funds accounting for over 80% of the free-floating stock on the Botswana Stock Exchange (BSE) are contributing to market illiquidity, as their long-term investment horizons limit tradable securities, thereby shrinking options for portfolio diversification and yielding a 'shortage' of assets for both the pension funds and other market actors.
Botswana's challenge is that it is now shifting gears, moving from relatively slow-paced public investment into an era of ambitious, large-scale project pipelines, particularly in infrastructure, energy, logistics, and agriculture. This transition demands a level of project readiness and technical competency that exceeds past norms.
A study by the International Monetary Fund on capital absorption constraints gave a case study of Ethiopia, which increased its public investment from five percent of GDP in the early 1990s to a staggering 16% by 2016. The result was not just impressive growth; it also unleashed an array of problems. Average planned project cost overruns rose from 58% in 2010 to 76% in 2016. In nearly 92% of cases, these were linked to incomplete project designs or scope changes, classic signs of overwhelmed governance systems.
In Botswana, the risks are starkly similar. On one hand, the country has identified priority sectors of digital infrastructure, green energy, agriculture, and regional logistics hubs as vehicles for transformation. On the other hand, many of the same structural weaknesses flagged by BIDPA, including skills shortages, weak project monitoring systems, and limited local contractor capacity, could act as bottlenecks.
Some examples include the Kazungula Bridge project, whilst ultimately successful, was riddled with delays and cost escalations. Numerous other state infrastructure projects, particularly those managed at the local government level, have failed to meet delivery targets or quality standards.
While private capital appears willing to enter the field of play, can Botswana provide the ground for success?