How the house always wins Batswana’s disposable incomes
Lewanika Timothy | Tuesday November 18, 2025 08:34
Local social media algorithms are ablaze with posts of a punter turning P1 to P1 million, a true opium story for any struggling layman.
The belief that P1 can turn into P1 million without having to sell your kidney has locked many into a maze, chasing a quick buck. The little that consumers have as disposable income has been a fierce battleground between retailers, insurance companies, leisure and hospitality service providers, with portion changes being instigated by the mass adoption of betting.
Recently, the country’s largest diversified financial services group, Botswana Insurance Holdings Limited (BIHL), attributed the sustained trend of low insurance penetration levels to a rise in consumerist behaviours like betting and gambling. Executives said the trend shrinks disposable incomes available for long-term savings and priorities, in search of short-term financial gains.
Announcing the group’s half-year performance recently, BIHL CEO Catherine Lesetedi said the number of people getting insurance cover for their assets and livelihoods is experiencing little growth due to the explosion in consumerist behaviours like online betting and high retirement cash-outs.
“We have seen stagnant insurance penetration levels in the industry due to a rise in consumerist behaviours like gambling,” she said. “This means that people are not prioritising long-term savings and are rather prioritising short-term expenditure.”
As people prioritise spending on immediate consumption like betting, fashion, electronics, travel and others, they allocate less money towards long-term financial products like life insurance, retirement annuities, or health cover.
This directly shrinks the customer base and premium inflows for insurers. Attesting to this trend, BIHL noted increased lapses or defaults in payments of insurance premiums as consumers prioritised other forms of expenditure, whilst defaulting on subscription-based saving plans like insurance. Often, when disposable incomes become constrained, individuals will tend to prioritise immediate consumption over long-term financial planning.
Retailers, as well, have not been spared from the pinch. Pick n Pay top executive, Sean Summers, recently penned that the industry needs to nip gambling addiction in the bud. According to Summers, the gambling industry is contributing to the increase in poverty, especially for the most downtrodden members of society.
“The simple truth is that addiction, poverty, and misery are at the core of the gambling industry, hardly a noble endeavour by any stretch of the imagination. It is never certain that when answering a question at a company’s results presentation, it will capture quite so much attention,” he said.
Insurance companies have been whispering about missed premiums, and retailers are seeing foot traffic. It is not that incomes have disappeared; rather, they are being rerouted to the promise of a jackpot.
Gambling’s spread across Botswana is not happening in a vacuum. It has found fertile ground in an economy where youth unemployment is stubbornly high, with wages lagging behind inflation, and many households living from one payslip to the next.
Part of what fuels the gambling wave is technology. Botswana’s high mobile phone penetration and widespread access to digital payment systems have made betting a 24-hour habit. With a few taps, anyone can place bets on global sports leagues, virtual races, or digital slot machines.
This accessibility has blurred the line between leisure and addiction, particularly amongst young people, who now spend significant portions of their data and airtime budgets chasing quick wins.
A psychiatry journal, under addictive disorders focusing on gambling, revealed that, in the end, gambling is a losing game for punters that accrues debt and losses for the vast majority.
The psychiatrists shared that gambling thrives in an environment of irrational decision-making that keeps people hooked on the idea of a possible win around the corner.
“Therefore, from an economic perspective, gambling has a negative expected value, meaning that over many attempts, accumulating debt is practically inevitable.
Despite this awareness, people extensively engage in these risky bets, providing valuable insights into the mechanisms of human irrationality and the propensity to accept and pursue bets that defy logic and rational decision-making,” researchers noted.
The researchers further explained that gambling behaviour is maintained by erroneous beliefs and difficulties in decision-making processes. The distorted beliefs about gambling might lead problem gamblers to overestimate their chances of winning and, therefore, continue gambling away their incomes.
Almost any punter one meets shares the belief that they were just one step away from winning. The psychological notion of near-misses keeps gamblers believing that they are a step closer to winning, a trap that keeps them in the betting loop.
“Moreover, especially in those gamblers who showed a tendency for ‘chasing losses’, the near-misses increased the desire to continue playing, suggesting that ‘near-misses’ can enhance the motivation for gamblers to pursue losses and continue playing, fuelling the illusion of control, and increasing the motivation to keep playing to avoid losses,” the research stated.
“Chasing losses appears to be strongly correlated with characteristics related to gamblers’ impulsivity, which makes gamblers more inclined to make irrational bets or pursue short-term gains without fully considering the long-term risks,” researchers revealed.
In gambling, the so-called near-miss, the sense of almost winning, is one of the most powerful psychological hooks. Near-misses, also known as near-wins, occur when elements of a game suggest to gamblers that they have almost achieved a winning outcome. “Near-misses seem to elicit higher heart rate deceleration and increased skin conductance responses compared to both wins or losses, probably due to the frustration related to a missing big win,” researchers shared.