These studies are meant to provide inspiration and information to Botswana policy-makers as well as businessmen and show how successful and industrious businessmen have managed to overcome the many known challenges of operating a profitable export oriented firm in a small landlocked country like Botswana.
The market is a very strange beast that sometimes produces the oddest, most unexpected outcomes- ones that you would never imagine and ones are not necessarily the product of government policy and surpass even the wildest imaginings of government's advisers. Whereas chewing gum has been produced in Botswana for a number of years production is set to treble as the country is rapidly emerging as the chewing gum capital of Southern Africa, where most of the region's chewing gum will be manufactured for export. This outcome is the result of commercial business decisions and not government policy. Originally a chewing gum factory was established in Gaborone and its current owners, the giant food multinational Kraft Foods, cannot explain why it was originally located here. It was, they believe, because of investments by South African or Zimbabwean interests.
