Inside the social welfare programme overhaul
Mbongeni Mguni - Pauline Dikuelo | Tuesday October 6, 2026 11:50
Fiscal authorities and the nation at large received a surprise Independence Day gift on Tuesday, when Statistics Botswana revealed that the economy grew by 8.7% in the second quarter compared to a contraction of 5.2% over the same period last year.
The figures represented two consecutive quarters of growth, the first time the trend has occurred since the third and fourth quarter of 2023, a feat that underlines the distress the economy has been in, in recent years.
Analysts already expect a positive year of growth for the economy this year, following two years of recession, an achievement eagerly anticipated by government and citizens alike.
Restoring the shine
During the Diamond Jubilee week, figures also emerged indicating that natural diamond sales in the United States rose by 8.8% in the first half of the year, while Indian demand was warming up. The U.S is the world’s largest market for natural diamond jewellery, while India is the second.
As encouraging as the signs are for the country, fiscal authorities are pressing ahead with a number of structural reforms aimed at returning the country to fiscal stability. Besides the spending restrain which has involved centralising payments within government, authorities have also embarked on unpopular actions around domestic resource mobilisation which include the new digital tax and a review of taxable earnings.
Using lessons learnt from economic downturns and guided by the Botswana Economic Transformation Programme (BETP), fiscal authorities have turned their sights on the expansive social welfare system that costs up to P10 billion annually.
The key system, which involves 37 programmes across eight ministries, is central to the wellbeing of the country’s most vulnerable citizens. Latest data from the Finance Ministry indicate that 49% of children in the country are multidimensionally poor meaning they face deprivation in at least two areas.
Hundreds of thousands of Batswana are dependent on social assistance programmes of one kind or another, spending which has continued and even intensified despite the multi-year slump in both the economy and the budget.
Despite the heavy spending, latest estimates indicate that about 21% of the underprivileged in the country do not have access to cover from any programme, due to various forms of inefficiencies as well as spending limitations. One key inefficiency is an inability across the ministries and programmes to root out double and even triple dipping as well as a failure to properly focus support. The result has been that many times those who should not benefit, receive support, over those who cannot afford and desperately need help.
As the country celebrates 60 years of Independence, some citizens have fallen through the gaps of the wealth created by the precious stones.
Information reaching Mmegi indicates that a multi-ministerial task team has been set up to review social protection programmes in order to enhance spending efficiency, ensure sustainability and support more dependents graduating out of the assistance.
The National Social Protection Task Team is providing strategic oversight, guidance and decision making to ensure successful delivery of the social protection reform programme, officials told Mmegi.
The review began on August 1 and is due to end in November with the production of a national social protection policy, that will support the single social registry listing all citizens eligible for welfare and continuously updating their status.
Gomolemo Tselakgopo, a member of the BETP Secretariat and deputy director of Department of Social Development, said it was clear that there were critical gaps in targeting and coverage within the social protection programme.
She said preliminary studies had also shown that despite high spending, the programmes were marked by dependency and low graduation, “demanding bold forms for sustainable social protection”.
“Around 49% of children are affected by issues of poverty and the question that BETP asked was why is it like that because we have a significant number of programmes that target children. “Then the answer was that it is evident that there's fragmentation and poor targeting which means that we have significant number of children who fall within cracks,” Tselakgopo said at a recent media briefing.
She said the reform would look at whether government is getting “value for money” in its social spending, a metric that can be tracked through the rate at which Batswana are able to graduate from the assistance.
“Right now, we are sitting at 37 social protection across eight ministries but we still see little graduation. “It has come through very clearly that the social protection programme is really promoting dependency within its beneficiaries. “We are seeing an increase of people getting into the programmes, but we don't see a significant people exiting, not just exiting, but having an alternative that will give them sustainable livelihoods, resilience,” she said.
Tracing the roots
From Independence and the later discovery of diamonds, the thinking within government was that mineral wealth should be used to ensure that those on the margins of society are carried along with the rest of the nation into the new era of economic growth.
Renowned author, businessman and former Cabinet minister, David Magang, writes that while founding president, Sir Seretse Khama, was not a believer in “freebies” or a “Father Christmas” approach, he was moved by the Rural Income Distribution Survey of 1974-75.
The survey found that rural Botswana was home to 85% of the population and uncovered sobering poverty.
“RIDS found that a great number of rural households did not have cattle at all and depended for their livelihood on subsistence farming, a precarious situation given the often capricious nature of the Botswana climate,” Magang wrote in his book, Delusions of Grandeur. “The annual income of over 45% of the rural households was below the absolute poverty line. “As for the urban dwellers, most were not yet fully integrated into the urban economy given the scarcity of employment opportunities and 60 to 70% of the households in some major towns had annual incomes which were way south of the poverty datum line.”
Programmes for destitutes kicked off, followed by others such as labour-based drought relief, vulnerable group feeding, orphan care, community home-based care, old age pensions, World War II veterans grants, Remote Area Development Programmes and others.
These extended to education grants and other interventions at local authority level.
By the time of Magang’s 2015 publication, the cost of social welfare programmes was already heavy.
“The problem we have is that as well-meaning as it is, welfare spending is a bottomless hole. “Government does not have a means of making up for the gargantuan sums, in Third World terms, it spends on social services every year.”
The pension debate As the reform unfolds, one contentious debate is the old age pension or Tandabala. Currently, the P1,400 monthly payouts are available to any citizen above the age of 65, regardless of their personal income status.
As the economy tightens, with an uncertain outlook and more calls for programme sustainability, questions are being asked why even wealthy individuals are benefiting from the programme, when they could be weeded out and more help given to those actually in need.
The thorny issue came up in Parliament last year, with bipartisan support for the introduction of means-testing in Tandabala.
Leader of the Opposition, Dumelang Saleshando said in the same way that the Child Grant support was subject to a means test, the same should apply to the Old Age Pensions scheme.
“The same should apply to old age pension, those that can afford to fend for themselves should not be paid the P1, 400,” he said. “Most of the time we have been told that Tandabala is given to everyone because doing a means test is costly. “The situation where you find a retired chief executive of a multinational company, a retired president, earning retirement pension plus Old Age pension of P1, 400, should stop.
The Minister of Environment and Tourism, Wynter Mmolotsi, said the issue of ‘double dipping’ should be better investigated.
“As we head towards including people aged 60 years and above in the pension allowance, we agreed that we should assess if there are no duplications and whether there is no double dipping so that we can fix these things,” he said.
For her part, Tselakgopo said work was already ongoing on better targeting within the old age pension programme.
“In social protection reform we are taking proxy means-testing,” she told Mmegi. “That is a conversation that has started and we really need to look at our programmes and means test them to see who are eligible for them. “When you talk of old-age pension, who are the people who need to benefit? “How do we then align our old-age pension scheme to other private schemes that are there where government is contributing? “So that's another area that is part of the reform.”
Road to reforms
The Finance Ministry expects its review of the social welfare programmes to culminate in a single social registry, where only the deserving will receive assistance.
According to officials, a consultant has been engaged to assist in assessing the existing situation and helping the reform required.
“Without that single social registry, we'll continue to experience fragmentation, we'll continue to experience duplication across the programmes,” Tselakgopo said. “This is the work that the consultant currently is working in, to really give us the situational and gap analysis report, to say how are we doing as a country, where are we in terms of social protection, what needs to be addressed when we talk of social protection programmes and the national social protection framework.”
She told Mmegi that already the work done since August had indicated the prevalence of double dipping.
“We'll only be able to really have the exact picture on how the double-dipping is happening across the programme once we've completed the Integrated Beneficiary Registry exercise. “However, we do see the same person appearing more than once, across some of the programmes,” she said.
Under the Integrated Beneficiary Registry (IBS) exercise, data integration from ministries is currently underway to establish a coordinated, comprehensive national view of beneficiaries.
The exercise will then feed into the single social registry which is a single view of every household, supporting targeting, eligibility and planning across the social protection system. The IBS is due by the end of the year, while the single social registry is expected to kick off next year.
From the riches borne out of the stones discovered decades ago, the Diamond Jubilee marks the start of efforts to ensure that a future where diamonds contribute less, is still supportive of the most vulnerable in society.