Traditionally Botswana has pursued an export-oriented policy that is driven by efficiency. It is a very hard and difficult road to take because Botswana is a member of SACU. Membership of SACU means that Botswana's exporters have a market of 52 million people in five countries. Therefore, the fact of our smallness is in very large part solved by our membership in SACU. But while smallness is solved by the existence of SACU, the fact of Botswana being landlocked is actually made worse by SACU because Botswana has to compete with the other SACU members as a destination for investment. While Namibia is not landlocked it is very remote from the main SACU market in Gauteng and so our main competitor is in reality South Africa. South Africa massively subsidises investment to locate there and we in Botswana largely gave up in the 1990s.
By any measure of a firm that is located in Botswana, one producing low cost protective packing foam for export would not logically locate here. Instead Foamex is very much alive, profitable and exporting. Indeed Lisani Ndaba and his wife Bontlogile Ndaba, who are co-owners of this company, are in many ways a poster-children of Batswana success in business. Ndaba is the sort of man that you want young Batswana to aspire to copy - he is young, smart and successful. There are many reasons why Foamex works but there is one that is absolutely vital that does not figure well in any statistical analysis of business - it's that look in Ndaba's eye - and when you see it you know right away that is the indefinable quality of a businessman who is there to win and will pay the price needed in order to win.
