The biology of breast cancer is ruthless in its simplicity: a cluster of cells begins to divide without permission, and with each passing week the odds of a clean retreat narrow. In much of the world, the tipping point between curable and not arrives early; often before a lump can be felt. In Botswana, as in many countries across southern Africa, that window still closes too often before a patient ever walks through a clinic...

First National Bank Botswana and SPEDU have signed a partnership agreement that could determine whether the country’s most ambitious economic diversification experiment succeeds; or stalls at the starting line. The numbers tell the story of a region still waiting for its second act. Somewhere between 5.9 billion and 6.8 billion pula in industrial investment projects sit in a pipeline overseen by SPEDU, the government agency created to resuscitate the Selebi Phikwe region after the BCL...

Botswana is confronting twin challenges of a possible drought; and a virus that is refusing to go away. It is threatening the livstock; and the beef industry. The cattle herd was 2.1 million not long ago – the national herd that underpins Botswana’s rural economy, its export earnings, its sense of self. Drought could kill thousands. And now a virus is moving through the crowds at the water points, leaping from one weakened animal to...

When António Guterres took the helm of the United Nations in 2017, the organization was already wrestling with questions about its relevance in a world tilting toward nationalism and great-power rivalry. Nine years later, as he prepares to step down at the end of his second term, those questions have only sharpened –  and the contest to replace him has become a referendum on whether the institution can still bend the arc of world events,...

Nearly two years after taking office on a mandate for sweeping change, Botswana’s government presented a detailed accounting of its record on Monday, claiming substantial progress in expanding social protection, settling inherited debts and overhauling the legal framework governing the state – while acknowledging that several of its most prominent promises remain unfulfilled. Moeti Mohwasa, the Minister of State President, Defence and Security, told a press conference that the administration had moved from manifesto commitments...

When the sun sets over the Kalahari, the lights that flicker on in villages across Botswana tell a story that began, in many cases, with a single company and a stubborn belief that every community, no matter how remote, deserves to be connected. Joe’s Electrical Contractors, founded in 1989 in a modest industrial plot in Tlokweng, is marking its 37th year of operation this month; a milestone that reads less like a corporate anniversary and...

When Dr. Seima Dijeng stood before a room of pharmaceutical executives, medical-device manufacturers and industry lawyers on Wednesday, his ask was modest and, by the standards of government consultation, almost disarming: “Be blunt.” The Chief Executive Offcier (CEO) of the Botswana Medicines Regulatory Authority (BOMRA) was not there to announce a finished product. He was there to share notes on a sweeping new medicines law; the most significant overhaul of the country’s pharmaceutical regulatory framework...

The blue half of Gaborone has seen plenty of drama before, but rarely this much of it at once. Township Rollers, the 16-time Botswana Premier League champions known across southern Africa as Popa or Mapalastina, are staring down the barrel of two simultaneous FIFA disputes involving South African players; one that has already resulted in a registration ban, and another that could deepen the crisis before the month is out. The first case involves Thabiso...