Botswana aims to become gateway to regional markets

GABORONE, May 13– Botswana is reimagining itself not as a landlocked country but as a land-linked catalyst, a senior official said on Thursday. “Our borders are not barriers, but bridges and gateways to regional markets and conduits for shared prosperity,” Vice President and Minister of Finance Ndaba Gaolathe said during a youth business symposium in Francistown, Botswana‘s second-largest city. He envisioned Botswana as a country that would become the logistics capital of Southern Africa, with a future where Gaborone, the national capital, would be connected by seamless corridors of rail, road, and data to other African cities, including Johannesburg in South Africa and Harare in Zimbabwe, among others. Gaolathe said Botswana is revitalizing its state-owned enterprises to become dynamic engines of innovation, competitiveness, and inclusive growth, including scaling up some entities through strategic partnerships and reforming others to meet emerging needs. In the energy sector, for instance, Gaolathe said Botswana is overhauling legislation to unbundle generation from transmission and to repurpose Botswana‘s power utility, thereby positioning it for relevance and resilience in a transformed energy ecosystem.