Botswana to host $500m regional Dangote IPO hub

Mbongeni Mguni | Monday October 19, 2026 06:00

Access Bank Botswana on Wednesday revealed that it had secured access to the $1.6 billion IPO, Africa’s largest ever, through unsponsored depository receipts that will be offered to local investors and listed on the BSE.

Under the sponsored variety, the Dangote Group would set aside shares in the recently opened IPO for a depository bank that would support the tradable receipts at local level for investors in the country. In the unsponsored scenario, the depository bank, in this case Access Bank, has secured a block of IPO shares and is availing the same tradable receipts to the BSE and further to the 14 members of the Committee of Southern African Stock Exchanges (CoSSE).

The BSE is facilitating the deal through the Botswana Depository Receipts or BDRs, allowing local and CoSSE investors smoother, lower cost access to the IPO, which currently is ongoing in Nigeria. Each BDR in the Dangote IPO will be equal to a share.

The unveiling of the BDRs marks a major achievement for Access Bank, the BSE and CoSSE which lobbied heavily for the receipts to be housed in the Gaborone-based exchange, from where the 14 members of the Committee can easily access through established infrastructure, systems and policies.

BusinessWeek is authoritatively informed that the size of the offer to be hosted on the BSE is $500 million (P6.9 billion), with the local exchange representing the Southern African hub of the IPO.

“By opening the door for investors across our region to participate in this refinery's future, you are extending the benefits of African industrialisation beyond national borders and giving practical meaning to the integrated AfCFTA,” said Minerals and Energy minister, Bogolo Kenewendo at the unveiling of the BDR platform. “In this sense, today is about more than a single transaction. “It is about Africa and Africans owning, financing, benefiting from assets that are here in our own land and that will shape the continent's future for generations to come.”

BDRs offer local investors access to global investment opportunities without having to bear most of the trading and custodial costs normally associated with such crossborder transactions, the BSE has said. Through BDRs investors are buying shares of a foreign listed company, on the BSE where they are familiar with the trading, clearing and settlement processes of the BSE.

Through CoSSE, the benefits will extend to the region.

Access Bank Botswana MD, Sheperd Aisam, said the scale of the IPO, its potential returns and deliberate targeting of ordinary, low-income retail investors, made it a once in a lifetime investment opportunity. Investors can buy into the IPO with a minimum of ten shares, unlike most IPOs that require blocks of thousands.

The limits of the BDRs has not been made public thus far.

“This is a history in the making and this is very unlikely to happen again in our own lifetimes. “This is a people's IPO and this is perhaps one of the most cost-effective investments into one of the most significant assets around petroleum that we'll be able to do in our lifetime. “We've been given an opportunity, not only as Botswana, not only as the lowest-earning person that you can ever think about, but everybody has a chance and this is a great opportunity for all of us. “Once we do that, we develop the capital markets in Botswana and once we do that we create wealth for the next generation,” he said.

For her part, BSE chairperson, Neo Mooki, who was pivotal in engaging the Dangote group and drawing the regional access to Botswana, said the launch of the BDRs was part of the democratisation of wealth, where access and growth opportunities are shared with all Africans.

“Africa is cooking and this time Africans must have a seat at the table and a stake in what is being said,” she said. “The next chapter of Africa's industrial revolution cannot be simply about what they build. “It must be about who gets to own what you build. “Africa does not have a capital problem, but rather a structuring problem. “We have the resources, the talent, the ambition, the savings and the entrepreneurs capable of building world class businesses. “What we have too often lacked are the financial pipes connecting African savings to African opportunities and those pipes are precisely what our capital markets must build.”

She continued: “Capital that cannot reach our people cannot fulfil Africa's promise and if Africa's industrialists are building industries, our responsibility is to build the pipes that connect our markets to one another. “These pipes will give ordinary Africans an opportunity to participate in the wealth being created across our continent.”