When the CEO Africa Roundtable convenes at the Gaborone International Convention Centre on 6 July 2026, the conversations in the room will be weighted by something more urgent than institutional ceremony.
Botswana is navigating its most consequential economic inflection point since independence, and the Roundtable has designed its programme to meet that moment directly.
The event convenes under the theme Towards a $40 Billion Economy by 2036, a target that reflects both the scale of Botswana’s ambition and the depth of the structural challenge the country faces. Foreign exchange reserves that stood at approximately $7.5 billion in 2017 had contracted to an estimated $3.2 billion by the close of 2024. The economy recorded contractions in both 2024 and 2025, the longest consecutive decline in post-independence history. The International Monetary Fund, in its 2025 Article IV consultation, described Botswana as standing at a critical juncture where diversification had become a structural necessity rather than a policy preference.
It is against that backdrop that the Roundtable, a pan-African institution dedicated to convening chief executives and policymakers around the continent’s economic agenda, has structured a programme that goes beyond broad economic aspiration. The sessions are designed, in the institution’s own framing, to move from concept to execution, from dialogue to signed commitments, and from policy ambition to measurable reform.
Central to the Roundtable’s architecture is an Investor Hosting Centre, a project centered on Project-Investor matching specifically designed to connect private sector capital with the 186 high impact projects identified under the Botswana Economic Transition Plan. Those projects carry a combined investment requirement of BWP 514 billion. The Roundtable is positioning itself as the transactional engine to move them from paper to ground.
Energy: A Capital Problem in Search of a Regulatory Solution
Among the sessions on the programme, the energy conversation carries some of the most direct consequences for Botswana’s broader diversification agenda. The country currently imports approximately 70 percent of its electricity and faces a US$2 billion energy infrastructure investment gap by 2030.
The Roundtable frames the challenge in terms that the private sector will recognise immediately. Botswana’s energy deficit is not, a resource problem. The country has abundant solar irradiation, available land, and a strategic position within the Southern African Power Pool. What it has lacked is the regulatory architecture and deal-structuring sophistication to convert investor interest into committed capital and infrastructure in the ground.
The session, titled Powering Botswana’s Next Economy: Unlocking Private Capital for Botswana’s Energy Infrastructure, will be led by Minister of Minerals and Energy Bogolo Kenewendo. The conversation is expected to probe the Independent Power Producer framework, regulatory reform as a prerequisite for investment, energy storage and grid modernisation, and the direct link between energy access and the diversification agenda. The institution has framed solar energy as a primary opportunity, describing it as a natural fit for the country’s geography and climate profile.
The energy session holds significance beyond the sector itself. Without reliable and affordable power, manufacturing cannot anchor in Botswana, precision agriculture cannot scale, and the digital economy ambitions that the Roundtable will separately address remain constrained. For the institutions and executives attending, the session represents an opportunity to test whether the regulatory environment is moving quickly enough to match the investment appetite the moment demands.
Diversification: Converting Policy Ambition into Export-Ready Industry
Botswana’s trade architecture tells a story that the Roundtable’s diversification session will need to confront directly. Currently, 55.1 percent of the country’s exports flow to Asia, while the African continent as a whole receives just 22.4 percent. Exports to Zimbabwe stand at 2.3 percent of total exports. Exports to Zambia were recorded at $26.38 million in 2023. Those figures, dominated by precious stones and minerals, describe an economy that has not yet converted its trade agreements into trade activity.
Botswana holds membership of the Southern African Customs Union, which provides duty-free access to a market of over 68 million people, the Southern African Development Community, which extends that reach to 406 million people across sixteen member states, and the African Continental Free Trade Area, which opens a formal preferential access framework to nearly 1.3 billion people across the continent. The question the session will interrogate is whether the country’s policy and regulatory environment is generating the industries capable of capitalising on those frameworks.
The session, From Extraction to Innovation: Leveraging Botswana’s Resources for Diversification and Development, is designed to identify actionable policy and regulatory frameworks that shift the economy from commodity extraction toward industrialisation, technological innovation, and advanced manufacturing. It brings together the Minister of Trade and Entrepreneurship, senior policy leadership from the Ministry of Finance, and Kipson Gundani, Chief Executive of the CEO Africa Roundtable, whose institution has positioned this conversation as central to the entire gathering.
The Roundtable is direct about what is at stake. The diamond-funded window for building a diversified economy is not permanent. Global capital is mobile and Botswana must demonstrate, in concrete policy terms, that it is building the conditions for a manufacturing and services economy, not simply describing the intention to do so.
The Big Debate: Testing the $40 Billion Target Against Real Arithmetic
The Roundtable will convene what it has titled The Big Debate: Towards a $40 Billion Economy by 2036. The session brings together experts from the Central Bank, those responsible for tracking national economic performance, and economic consultants with direct engagement in Botswana’s growth data.
The session’s significance lies in its function. Where other sessions on the programme are oriented toward sector-specific solutions, this one is designed to hold the overarching target itself to account. The 2026/2027 National Budget projects a GDP rebound of 3.1 percent this year, a projection the government has described as conditional on the successful implementation of diversification and reform initiatives. Reaching $40 billion by 2036 would require sustained growth at a rate that demands far more than a single-year recovery.
The presence of the Central Bank at this level of the conversation is itself notable. The institution holds the clearest institutional view of the gap between projected growth and the trajectory actually required to reach the 2036 target, and its participation signals a willingness to engage that gap publicly rather than allow the target to function as an aspirational horizon without accountability structure.
A Presidential Address and the Expectation of Commitment
The convening gives policy makers and the private sector to engage directly on the BETP projects and the investment environment surrounding them.
The Roundtable has been explicit about what it expects from the gathering. Success, in the institution’s framing, is not defined by attendance or the quality of the discourse. It is defined by signed memoranda of understanding, allocated capital, and a clear roadmap for the high-impact projects that will define Botswana’s next decade.
For Botswana’s private sector and for the regional and international investors expected in the room, the Gaborone International Convention Centre on the 6th of July will offer a concentrated test of whether the country’s economic leadership, across both government and the corporate sector, is prepared to move from the language of transformation to its execution.
**The CEO Africa Roundtable Botswana convenes at the Gaborone International Convention Centre on the 6th of July 2026. CEO Africa Roundtable is a pan-African institution dedicated to championing economic development across Africa.