Rickety Bonno never truly got off the ground
Spira Tlhankane | Monday February 9, 2026 09:13
The Bonno Housing Scheme, one of the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) government’s flagship promises on affordable housing, has never truly got off the ground. Rock with stalled projects, collapsed partnerships and rising public distrust from the onset, Bonno has now been thrown into fresh turmoil.
In a press release, the ministry has instructed that all communications on revised prices for the Bonno D4 scale and below turnkey housing projects be withdrawn with immediate effect. The ministry stated that the proposed adjustments had not received final approval. The move comes after district councils across the country published new loan figures that sent shockwaves through prospective beneficiaries.
The now-withdrawn notices revealed steep increases that fundamentally altered the affordability of the scheme. A one-bedroom house loan jumped from P282,000 to P414,490.32, pushing monthly repayments from P1,175 to P1,727 over 20 years. Two-bedroom units more than doubled in cost, rising from P235, 000 to P504, 421.50, while three-bedroom houses climbed to over P622, 000. For many low-income earners under the D4 scale and below, these figures effectively priced them out of a programme marketed as a lifeline.
After the councils published the changes, public reaction was swift and unforgiving, with social media platforms lit up with accusations that the UDC government was reneging on its promise of affordable housing. Critics questioned how beneficiaries already grappling with rising living costs were expected to absorb such increases.
Before the withdrawal this week, Minister of Water and Human Settlements, Onneetse Ramogapi, publicly distanced himself from the revised figures, effectively disowning the hikes last month. He admitted the adjusted prices did not meet the government’s own affordability standards and urged Batswana to ignore the published rates.
“Batswana should, in the meantime, ignore the publicised rates as they do not reflect what we stand for,” Ramogapi told this publication then. He added that consultations with stakeholders were underway to review the pricing.
While the ministry’s withdrawal of the notices appears to validate public outrage, it has also exposed deeper fault lines in the administration of the Bonno scheme. Local authorities had already issued official public notices with precise figures, raising serious questions about coordination, internal approvals, and governance within the housing programme.
“How did such drastic price changes reach the public domain without final ministerial approval? And who authorised councils to communicate figures that the ministry now says were premature?” critics questioned.
The ministry now insists that the withdrawal is meant to “safeguard transparency, consistency, and the public interest.” Yet for beneficiaries, commentators argue that the damage may already be done and that trust in the scheme has been shaken with uncertainty hanging over many who had pinned their hopes on Bonno as a pathway to home ownership.
Bonno is central to President Duma Boko’s housing agenda, with the government promising thousands of affordable units nationwide. Ramogapi told Parliament in December that 353 units were planned for construction in the current financial year, with 58 already under construction and more than 12,000 units either under construction or at the pre-construction stage across various housing schemes. But the latest episode raises concerns about whether the pace and scale of implementation are being matched by sound planning and cost control.
Under the Bonno turnkey model, the government and its partners design and build houses for beneficiaries who already own serviced plots. Looking back, Bonno had never known peace from the onset. Barely six months after the flourish launch of the Bonno Target 3000 housing initiative touted by President Duma Boko as the first concrete step in delivering 100,000 affordable homes, the ambitious project is in tatters.
When the government ceremonially broke ground at Kgale View in April 2025, the message was bold: to deliver 3,000 homes in 24 months under a flagship programme designed to transform Botswana’s housing landscape and tackle generational inequality. But what followed was less transformation and more turbulence.
By October 2025, investigations by Mmegi revealed that the first phase of the project had effectively collapsed. The Botswana Housing Corporation (BHC) confirmed that its much-publicised partnership with developer Ongos Valley, the key player for the first 3,000 homes, had lapsed and been abandoned after negotiations broke down. No meaningful construction had taken place by the time the agreement terminated, leaving a high-profile project without a foundation. BHC officials later said they were courting new investors and hoped to “kick off” the project in early 2026, but such reassurances highlight how preliminary planning and execution have failed to match political rhetoric.
This collapse was emblematic of unending missteps that have dogged the programme. In late 2025, Onneetse Ramogapi acknowledged publicly that the government “went wrong” in its handling of Bonno, describing the initiative, and particularly the stalled Kgale project, as a learning curve.
Those admissions of failure are now reinforced by the latest chaos surrounding the scheme's drastic loan price increases. This latest reversal, which saw revised loan amounts for beneficiaries pulled back for further review, adds fuel to the argument that Bonno lacks coherent policy direction and bureaucratic coordination. Taken together, these episodes paint a troubling picture, and for ordinary Batswana, hope and patience have been eroded, and confidence in one of the government’s headline social programmes is dwindling. Rather than a compelling start to a national housing revolution, Bonno’s first year has been marked by strategic drift, operational setbacks, and political damage control.
As the government prepares yet another round of stakeholder engagements and reviews, analysts say the root of the problem isn’t ambition but execution. Analysts argue that without stronger project management, transparent oversight and meaningful engagement with the very citizens the scheme aims to serve, Bonno risks becoming a cautionary tale of good intentions gone wrong rather than a lasting solution to Botswana’s housing challenges.