BETP’s moment of truth
Bone Prince Lekgotla | Tuesday December 23, 2025 12:43
It is against this backdrop that President Advocate Duma Boko recently launched the Botswana Economic Transformation Programme (BETP) Labs, describing them as the “engine rooms” of Botswana’s journey toward high-income status. Speaking at the launch in Gaborone few months ago, the President noted that the labs would refine project concepts, develop roadmaps, establish performance indicators and remove structural barriers to progress.
This was a powerful statement of national intent. But intent alone will not transform Botswana’s economy. Only execution will.
A defining national ambition
The BETP Labs, comprising six economic and three social labs, are structured to focus on seven priority sectors identified by Cabinet for their comparative advantage: agriculture, manufacturing, infrastructure, financial services and digitalisation, tourism, energy, water and mining.
President Boko underscored that agriculture’s contribution to GDP is expected to grow from 2% to 6% as part of strengthening food security and unlocking agro-industrial growth. Infrastructure development is intended to reposition Botswana as a logistics hub for the Southern African Development Community (SADC), while manufacturing is expected to become a key driver of job creation and regional export capacity.
“These sectors are strategic and deliberate, envisioning a digitally enabled, export-driven, and economically diversified Botswana where every citizen enjoys equal opportunity,” Boko stated.
Vice President and Minister of Finance Ndaba Gaolathe further revealed that the BETP has already received over 3,500 project submissions from citizens, entrepreneurs and private entities, with a technical team refining 200 high-impact projects for implementation, some requiring no direct government funding. He described the initiative as a defining chapter in Botswana’s economic history and a central pillar informing the 12th National Development Plan (NDP 12).
PEMANDU Associates’ joint managing director, Aida Azmi, explained that the labs are anchored in the Big, Fast Results methodology, drawing on implementation experiences in Malaysia, Senegal and Rwanda, while being tailored to Botswana’s unique socio-economic context.
In principle, the framework is bold, timed and commendable. Yet from the vantage point of those working on the ground, a sobering reality remains.
When ambition meets operational reality
As Project Lead for a manufacturing venture intended to directly contribute to this transformation, I have had a front-row view of the structural friction facing projects that seek to move Botswana from consumption to production.
While the BETP promises to remove barriers to progress, some of the obstacles confronting transformational projects are neither temporary nor peripheral. They are systemic and deeply embedded in how policy is executed.
These include: • Uneven industrial readiness • Infrastructure gaps on designated industrial land • Fragile demand certainty for locally produced goods • Weak enforcement of procurement commitments • Limited domestic market absorption for local manufacturers
These are not technical inconveniences. They are existential factors that determine whether a project flourishes or collapses.
Production before export: The forgotten sequence
Botswana’s aspiration to become an export-led economy is both logical and necessary. However, history has shown that no nation attains export competitiveness without first commanding its domestic market.
South Africa did not become a regional manufacturing powerhouse by chasing external markets before stabilising internal demand. It did so by building robust domestic absorption, anchored heavily on government procurement and industrial clustering.
For Botswana, government remains the single largest and most reliable customer. If transformative projects cannot secure consistent local demand particularly from the state, export dreams become economically hollow.
A local market that does not serve as a springboard cannot launch a nation into export competitiveness. Off-take: The heartbeat of industrial viability
What makes this challenge more acute is the lived reality of SPEDU-based manufacturing enterprises, many of which are struggling to secure consistent business from the Government of Botswana despite their geographical and policy positioning. SPEDU-located manufacturers, who were meant to be primary beneficiaries of the government’s 30% procurement reservation, continue to report minimal or irregular government contracts, forcing them to compete on equal footing with suppliers located outside the region. This directly contradicts the spirit and intent of the 30% off-take agreement and erodes the commercial foundation upon which these businesses were encouraged to establish operations.
In practice, the Government of Botswana is not honouring the 30% off-take commitment in a manner that is visible, enforceable or commercially reliable. The consequence is severe: manufacturers that were meant to be anchored by state demand are instead exposed to uncertainty, underutilisation and financial strain.
Off-take agreements are often misunderstood as bureaucratic instruments. In reality, they are the financial heartbeat of manufacturing viability.
They underpin: • Investor confidence • Project finance approval • Revenue predictability • Debt servicing capacity • Long-term sustainability
The sequence is brutally simple:
No reliable off-take No business case No investment No industrialisation. Without enforceable demand mechanisms, even the most innovative BETP projects will struggle to reach commercial stability.
A historic opportunity and a silent risk
Botswana now stands at a historic inflection point. Through BETP, the nation has demonstrated an understanding of what must change. But the real test lies not in design, but in discipline.
If execution fails to match ambition, the BETP risks becoming a blueprint of intention rather than a catalyst for structural economic change.
This is not a critique of vision. It is a call to protect that vision from being undermined by operational inertia.
The question that will define BETP’s legacy
Will the Botswana Economic Transformation Programme be remembered as the initiative that redefined Botswana’s economy or as a moment of clarity that arrived without consequence? The answer will not be found in policy speeches or laboratory frameworks. It will be written in factories that produce, jobs that endure and exports that carry the imprint “Made in Botswana.”
Transformation cannot be declared. It must be enforced, enabled and sustained. And that responsibility belongs not only to policy architects, but to every institution tasked with making Botswana’s ambition real.
*Lekgotle is Project Lead – Manufacturing Development Project, Selebi-Phikwe and Lead Consultant at Infinite Capabilities