Copper cable theft bills BoFiNet P12m
Lewanika Timothy | Monday September 29, 2025 06:18
BoFiNet’s copper theft losses place it amongst other major victims in the sector, including Botswana Telecommunications Corporation (BTC) and Botswana Power Corporation (BPC), which have also been hemorrhaging millions annually in an attempt to replace and maintain stolen copper lines.
Speaking recently during a stakeholder update held in Gaborone this week, BoFiNet head of Network Operations, Hendrick Matlhaku, said that one of BoFiNet's major operational challenges is the continuous theft of copper cables, which drains the company’s labour resource and time spent on maintenance.
“Maintenance remains a major challenge; in the past financial year, we have spent over P12 million. And the problem is not just the labour costs or cost of new material, we also consider the opportunity cost of time that we could have otherwise spent elsewhere,” he said.
Matlhaku revealed that, in some extreme cases, thieves have even cut fibre lines, which the industry has adopted as a solution to phase out copper, mistakenly believing the fibre cables contained copper. The copper menace has also hit cooperations like BPC, which incurred a loss of approximately P88.2 million due to stolen copper cables in the past five years
Answering a question in Parliament on behalf of the Minister for Minerals and Energy, the Minister for Environment and Tourism, Wynter Mmolotsi stated that the government has for the longest time been battling with surging cases of copper theft targeting BPC, with total costs nearing P100 million
'Between 2021 and 2025, BPC recorded a total of 11,491 incidents of infrastructure vandalism, primarily targeting copper cables. These incidents occurred across BPC’s national infrastructure and have cost the corporation approximately P88.2 million over the five years,” he said.
The telecoms industry has, however, in the past years begun moving away from copper to fibre mainly because fibre offers faster speeds, higher bandwidth, and better reliability over long distances, while using less power and requiring less maintenance.
Fibre has little to no resale value compared to copper, which significantly reduces the risk of copper theft, a costly problem for telecom operators. This shift not only future-proofs networks for growing data demand but also lowers long-term operational costs.
In a bid to curb this growing trend, the Gaborone City Council (GCC) councilors this year unanimously adopted a motion proposing stricter penalties for offenders. The motion called for a minimum fine of P50,000 for individuals convicted of copper-cable theft.
Furthermore, it recommended that scrapyards and businesses found in possession of stolen copper be subjected to a minimum fine of P100,000, with immediate closure upon a second offence. .