CEDA product to finance resurgence of livestock sector
Pauline Dikuelo | Wednesday November 19, 2025 06:31
The Cattle Expansion Product Packages, under the auspices of A-Di-Tsale Product Suite, is a response to long-standing challenges in the beef industry by strengthening animal health, improving reproductive performance, enhancing fodder and water security, and providing financial products tailored to livestock production cycles. Minister of Trade and Entrepreneurship, Tiroeaone Ntsima, has described the programme as a strategic national intervention, a building block of transformation, fully aligned with Vision 2036, NDP 12 and the Botswana Economic Transformation Programme (BETP). 'This Product Suite is the engine that will finance the resurgence of Botswana’s livestock sector, strengthen our rural economies, and reassert our competitive position in regional and global markets,' he said, during the launch on Thursday.
Ntsima took the opportunity to reaffirm new administration’s commitment to creating a supportive business environment for farmers, adding his Ministry was committed to reducing red tape. All these will culminate in improving the ease of doing business, strengthening market access and export readiness, enhancing standards, quality control and traceability, supporting clusters, cooperatives, and agro processing, and creating a fairer, more competitive environment free of exploitative practices. He revealed that the Ministry will collaborate with the Ministry of Lands and Agriculture, the Botswana Vaccine Institute, the Botswana Meat Commission, farmer associations and cooperatives to ensure the programme delivers results across all districts. Acting Minister of Lands and Agriculture, Dr Edwin Dikoloti, highlighted that the Ministry he leads has launched its own A-Di-Tsale Programme in September, aimed at strengthening the beef value chain through improved husbandry and reproductive technologies. “That programme aims to elevate productivity at farm level and restore the foundations of our national herd,” he told the gathering.
Dikoloti added that the CEDA suite stands as the financial engine that complements and accelerates his Ministerial initiative. Whereas the Ministry of Lands and Agriculture’s programme builds capacity, improves genetics and enhances farmer skills, the CEDA suite unlocks the capital, technologies, infrastructure and working capital needed to turn that capacity into real production gains. Dikoloti emphasised that the two interventions would create a seamless pipeline from extension support to financing, from improved husbandry to commercial production. For his part CEDA’s caretaker CEO said the development finance institution is introducing five purpose-built financing products, each designed to remove a specific barrier to growth and productivity. He explained that these products, that range from Assisted Reproductive Technologies financing to group funding mechanisms and a repackaged cattle production fund, are “tools of empowerment not just loans, but levers for transformation.”
The rollout of A-Di-Tsale Product Suite serves as a direct response to President Duma Boko’s national call for Botswana to rebuild her cattle herd to five million by 2030 and restore agriculture as a vibrant and technologically enabled sector. Botswana’s herd, once recorded at three million, has in recent years fallen to between 1.6 and 1.7 million due to drought, disease outbreaks, limited genetic improvement and a fragmented value chain. According to CEDA’s modelling, the new packages are projected to contribute up to 1.49 million cattle towards the national herd within five years, benefiting more than 6,000 farmers and generating an estimated 10,530 jobs.