From micro-businessman to tycoon

Flamboyant tycoon, Bartholomew Ophaketse Gaobakwe,  commonly known as "Uncle Parks", was driven by poverty to become a businessman. The man who is counted among Botswana's richest traces his involvement in business to his humble family background. He started out as a seller of firewood as a boy and now he owns the Legae shopping complex and a double storey office block at the BBS mall.

Uncle Parks' life is a classic from rags to riches story. When he was a child, he sold firewood for his poor mother in Lobatse. The wood he collected from the hills and the bush was used by his mother to brew traditional sorghum beer and a wine-like alcohol known as khadi. "My mother sold khadi, le bojalwa jwa Setswana. This was a micro business for sustenance of the family," he says.