From tokenising government bonds to listing a US$500million Dangote Depository Receipt and plugging into Abu Dhabi’s US$1 trillion Tabadul Hub, BSE Head of Product Development Kopano Bolokwe unpacks the audacious 10X by 2030 blueprint to onshore billions in pension money, finance 186 national projects, and turn every Motswana into an investor.
In the quiet corridors of the Botswana Stock Exchange, a high-stakes financial revolution is being architected. It is not just about trading shares. It is about rebuilding the financial plumbing of a nation.
At the centre of it is the BSE’s ’10X by 2030′ Strategy; an audacious plan to grow Botswana’s capital markets tenfold, repatriate billions in pension capital under a 50:50 local-to-offshore mandate, and transform Gaborone from a well-run frontier market into Africa’s premier financial gateway.
Speaking in an interview, Head of Product Development Kopano Bolokwe offers a rare masterclass in how you engineer a market for a tenfold leap without blowing it up.
The immediate fear with any forced onshoring of pension capital is obvious: too much money chasing too few assets creates a bubble.
Bolokwe’s answer is product velocity.
“Investment products constitute the financial architecture through which capital is formed, mobilised, and strategically allocated,” he says. Over the last decade, the BSE has moved far beyond equities and bonds into Exchange-Traded Funds, Eurobonds, supranational debt, commercial paper and asset-backed securities.
Under 10X, product innovation is not an afterthought, it is one of five transformative pillars, executed in three horizons. Every new instrument must pass four tests: Does it channel capital into the real economy? Does it drive inclusion and socio-economic impact? Is it commercially self-sustaining? Is it scalable locally and globally?
The strategy is to meet rising buy-side demand with high-quality supply, deepening core equities and bonds while pushing into derivatives, depository receipts and commodities.
It is already working. Year-to-date total market capitalisation has surged 57.9 percent, breaching the historic P1.1 trillion mark. Three global ETFs issued by Satrix helped triple ETF turnover to over P1.0 billion. The domestic bond market grew 17 percent to a record P46 billion.
That, Bolokwe argues, is how you absorb billions without inflating a bubble; you create more market.
If the first pillar is absorbing capital, the second is directing it.
“The capital market acts as the primary economic nucleus of the nation,” Bolokwe notes. The private entities listed on the BSE are already valued at more than four times Botswana’s domestic economy, proof that the market can lead diversification away from mineral-led wealth.
The product pipeline is deliberately mapped to the Botswana Economic Transformation Programme (BETP),186 sovereign projects valued at around P514 billion. To connect pension funds to those projects, the BSE is structuring infrastructure funds, project bonds, green bonds and sustainability-linked vehicles.
Two milestones stand out.
First, a P20 billion Botswana Infrastructure Fund being structured with a prominent African development finance institution that mobilises over $50 billion annually. Second, Botswana’s inaugural municipal bond framework, already finalised, which will allow Gaborone City Council to raise capital directly from the market, easing pressure on the sovereign balance sheet and letting private capital build cities.
The Tokenisation Leap
Financial evolution no longer stops at the stock certificate. It now lives on a blockchain.
Botswana, Bolokwe says, has secured a first-mover advantage by passing the Non-Bank Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority Virtual Assets Act of 2025, creating a rigorous, transparent licensing regime.
That clarity has triggered global interest. The BSE has executed strategic agreements and completed a proof of concept with a global stablecoin issuer. It has formalised a business case for a pilot to tokenise sovereign debt securities, pending final regulatory approval.
The logic mirrors what the BSE already did with gold. “By fractionalising high-value assets, mirroring the architectural concept of our gold-backed ETFs, tokenisation drastically lowers investment thresholds, amplifies secondary market liquidity, and facilitates continuous 24/7 trading,” Bolokwe explains.
The target: deploy the technological infrastructure and partnerships within the first six months of 2027, benchmarking against Singapore, Hong Kong, the UAE and Switzerland.
What Is Coming in the Next 24 Months
Elite strategy needs elite capacity. Bolokwe, an alumnus of the IFC – Milken Institute Capital Markets Programme at George Washington University and with institutional tenure at MarketAxess in New York, says the BSE is importing global operational methodologies through its leadership.
The next 12 to 24 months will be crowded:
Dangote Refineries Unsponsored Depository Receipt: a major regional offering targeting US$500 million, positioning the BSE as the Southern African nexus for one of Africa’s most significant industrial listings.
Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs): structured alongside leading African development finance institutions.
Commodity-Linked Innovation: Botswana’s first Exchange-Traded Note with direct exposure to physical silver spot prices.
Global ETF Expansion: 7 new international ETFs tracking FTSE 100, Nikkei 225 and other premier indices.
Primary Equity Pipeline: listings from corporate heavyweights such as ContinentalRE and Kwa Nokeng Oil.
For all the institutional architecture, Bolokwe keeps returning to one mantra: bringing the market back to the customer.
“Our institutional analytics reveal a critical behavioral trend: a significant demographic of young Batswana are disproportionately participating in speculative crypto-assets over traditional equities. This pattern is primarily driven by capital entry barriers and structural friction,” he says.
The antidote is fractionalisation. The NewGold ETF already refines physical gold bullion into 100 affordable units. Tokenisation will eliminate minimum ticket sizes entirely.
Before the end of this fiscal year, the BSE will launch an integrated retail distribution ecosystem allowing investors to execute real-time capital market transactions via everyday digital channels, the same channels they use to buy airtime or pay bills.
Green Finance as a Growth Engine
Sustainability is no longer a side segment. The BSE has centralised it under a single framework. Its Sustainable Bonds Segment has already facilitated nearly P100 million for renewable energy and affordable housing.
To accelerate adoption, the exchange offers a 25 percent discount on initial and annual listing fees for verified Green, Social, Sustainability-Linked and Sustainable instruments, plus formal ESG ratings and a disclosure framework aligned to international standards.
The next frontier is more ambitious: monetising environmental assets. Backed by the African Development Bank, the BSE is developing Botswana’s inaugural Voluntary Carbon Credit Market framework and exploring infrastructure to host the National Carbon Registry. The ecosystem is projected to unlock over P100 million within 24 months, monetising communal land and forestry assets while delivering on its Force for Good mandate.
Secondary market illiquidity is the curse of many African exchanges. Bolokwe says the BSE is tackling it with a four-tiered methodology, working with regulators and clearinghouses to overhaul legacy compliance structures to permit full-scale Securities Lending and Borrowing (SLB), a prerequisite for robust market-making.
The proof of concept is already there. By broadening ETFs and onboarding a dedicated market-maker, ETF turnover tripled to P1.0 billion year-to-date. Formal SLB will allow hedging, lower transaction costs and reduce the long-term cost of capital for issuers.
Internationalisation is the final pillar, and perhaps the most audacious.
Beyond the Dangote receipt, the crowning achievement came in August 2026, when the BSE became the first African exchange and only the 11th globally to integrate into Abu Dhabi’s US$1 trillion Tabadul Hub. The cross-border digital bridge creates a direct pipeline between Sub-Saharan Africa and Gulf Cooperation Council liquidity, enabling seamless cross-listings and mutual investor access.
Intra-Africa, the BSE is fully operational within the African Exchanges Linkage Project (AELP) and maintains robust connectivity with SADC markets through the Committee of Central Securities Depositories (COSSE) Connectivity Project.
By 2030, success will not be measured in P1 trillion milestones.
“The ultimate metric of success extends far beyond capital market capitalisation records, transaction volumes, or institutional fee generation. Genuine validation lies in the tangible, measurable improvement of the financial welfare of ordinary Batswana,” Bolokwe says.
His vision: a young Motswana professional deploying micro-capital to build a diversified portfolio; a family systematically accumulating listed investments for education and real estate; local entrepreneurs accessing non-dilutive capital to scale and create jobs.
“Botswana’s macroeconomic transition cannot be evaluated solely through abstract national accounting statistics. It must be reflected in the financial resilience of households, the expansion of locally owned enterprises, and the broad-based democratisation of wealth creation. The BSE is not merely tracking Botswana’s economic progress; we are actively financing its future.”
