15 Students Set Out to Build Something New
At a fellowship backed by MIT and the Botswana government, young entrepreneurs are turning laboratory research into ventures – and testing whether a small nation can build its way out of dependency on a single commodity.
On a Wednesday evening, inside the sleek auditorium of the Botswana Digital & Innovation Hub in Gaborone, 15 university students stood before a room of cabinet ministers, academics, and investors and attempted something their country has long struggled to do: prove that Botswana can produce more than minerals.
The occasion was the final pitch night of the BIUST Student Entrepreneurship Fellowship Programme, a year-long initiative born from an unusual partnership between the Government of Botswana and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The 15 fellows, graduate and undergraduate students at the Botswana International University of Science and Technology, have spent the past year transforming laboratory research and technical know-how into business ventures that address problems most Botswanans know intimately: unreliable electricity, unsafe drinking water, agricultural inefficiency, and an economy still tethered to diamond exports.
The ventures span seven sectors, from manufacturing and clean energy to biotechnology and mining. Their founders are chemists, engineers, and computer scientists who, until recently, had never been asked to think of themselves as entrepreneurs.
“Entrepreneurship is not simply about starting a business,” Professor Patricia Makepe, the programme’s director and dean of BIUST’s School of Business and Professional Development, told the fellows. “It is about identifying opportunities, taking initiative, learning continuously, and creating value.” It is the kind of statement that sounds obvious in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but carries a different weight in a country where the path from campus to startup has historically been, at best, unmarked.
A Nation at an Inflection Point
Botswana has spent decades talking about economic diversification. Diamonds built the modern Botswanan state; Jwaneng and Orapa are among the richest diamond mines on earth. The country’s Vision 2036 document calls for a transition from a resource-based to a knowledge-based economy. But the gap between aspiration and execution has been wide.
The acting vice chancellor of BIUST, Professor Elisha Shemang, put the challenge plainly in his welcoming address at the pitch night. Botswana, he said, has a proud legacy of natural resource wealth; it has “helped to build infrastructure, institutions, opportunities for generations of our children.” But he cautioned that the country could not treat that achievement as the end of its economic journey.
“Diversification is not achieved by naming sectors alone,” Shemang said. “It depends on capabilities that allow more to grow: scientific understanding, technological skills, entrepreneurial judgment, and partnerships that put solutions to work.”
He described the fellowship as a bridge – “between technical potential and venture creation, between a promising insight and a demanding world of creating real-world value.”
His framing was echoed by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Higher Education, Professor Richard Tabulawa, who said the graduation represented a significant milestone for the ministry and the country. The ministry’s mandate, he said, was to produce a globally competitive workforce through STEM education while simultaneously equipping young people with the skills to “create value, generate opportunities, and contribute meaningfully to Botswana’s economic development.”
“It represents not only the fulfillment of an important aspect of our ministry’s mandate,” Tabulawa said of the fellowship, “but also a powerful demonstration of what we seek to achieve, which is technically skilled graduates who are entrepreneurial, innovative, and are equipped to contribute to Botswana’s economic transformation.”
The urgency is real. The Ministry of Trade and Entrepreneurship’s Permanent Secretary, Joel Duke Ramaphoi, described the event as a milestone in Botswana’s economic transformation journey; and one whose timing is particularly important as the country implements the Botswana Economic Transformation Programme in response to the need to reduce its dependence on diamonds.
“Prosperity must be built not only on what lies beneath our soil, but on what lies within our people,” Ramaphoi said.
From Lab Bench to Launch Pad
The fellowship, known as BSEFP, was designed to bridge exactly the gap Shemang described. Over the course of the year, fellows moved through a structured sequence-orientation, learning, mentorship, venture development, ecosystem exposure, validation, and pitch preparation; before arriving at Wednesday night’s culmination. Along the way, they traveled to South Africa for a venture development and ecosystem tour, testing their ideas against markets and mentors beyond Botswana’s borders.
The cohort’s sector breakdown reveals where the country’s emerging innovators see the biggest openings. Manufacturing, materials, and circular economy ventures form the largest cluster, alongside clean energy and climate technology. Agriculture and food, health and biotechnology, water and environmental solutions, digital technology, and mining round out the roster.
Makepe, who gave the programme overview at the pitch night, said the inaugural cohort had undergone a journey designed to develop entrepreneurial leadership and venture-building capabilities. Although the programme initially attracted a much larger pool of applicants, 15 fellows ultimately formed the first cohort.
She placed particular emphasis on what she called the why, how, and what of entrepreneurship. “The why is really your purpose,” she told the audience. “What is driving you to want to be a venture builder? The what then is the actual business, the actual problem that you are trying to solve.”
She said many entrepreneurs focus immediately on the business idea, while the fellowship sought to produce more rounded founders who understood their purpose and the problems they were trying to address.
“It is delivered to empower students to transform innovative ideas, research and technical knowledge into viable ventures while developing their entrepreneurial, leadership and innovation capabilities,” Makepe said.
Ventures Born from Fractures
Each venture tells a story about a specific fracture in Botswana’s development – and a specific attempt to repair it.
Mpho Edwin Tsie, a PhD candidate in chemical engineering, founded AquaPure Inn to develop affordable water purification technologies. His classmate Roy Ramanno, a geological engineering student, created AquaSense Innovations to build locally sourced household water treatment systems. Both are responding to a reality that international development data makes plain: access to safe drinking water remains inconsistent across rural Botswana.
In the energy space, Tumelo Kabo Oketsang, a master’s student in electrical engineering, is building SMART-SOL, a venture developing solar-powered microgrids for underserved communities. Garegae Collins Mmoloki, who is pursuing a master’s in industrial and manufacturing engineering, founded Tswana Briquettes, which turns waste into sustainable fuel alternatives. Their work addresses the fact that despite Botswana’s abundant sunlight, clean energy access remains uneven, and the country still imports much of its fuel.
Indigenous Knowledge, Modern Markets
Two of the most striking ventures sit at the intersection of traditional African knowledge and contemporary bioscience – a territory that few mainstream incubators anywhere in the world have learned to navigate well.
Tiisetso Venesa Thekoeng, a master’s student in biological sciences and biotechnology, founded Sisinyana Biologics to validate indigenous healing practices through modern research, with an initial focus on chronic wound healing. Bertha Nametso Tema, a PhD candidate, established Nams GreenSprouts Biotechnologies to use tissue culture techniques for the rapid propagation of indigenous medicinal plants like Artemisia afra, known locally as Lengana. Her goal: supply high-quality plantlets to herbal medicine practitioners, nurseries, and pharmaceutical companies while preserving Botswana’s medicinal plant heritage.
Both ventures raise a question that the fellowship itself implicitly poses: can traditional knowledge, long dismissed or ignored by formal institutions, become the foundation for commercially viable – and clinically credible – products? Thekoeng and Tema are betting that it can.
Mining’s Afterlife
Botswana’s relationship with mining is complicated. Diamonds built the modern Botswanan state, but the industry leaves behind waste, environmental damage, and an economy dangerously dependent on a single commodity whose long-term demand is uncertain.
Several fellows are working on what might be called mining’s afterlife -the moment when extraction ends and the mess remains.
Lefika Mosutlhelo, a mining engineering undergraduate, founded Copper Bloom to develop sustainable uses for mining by-products. Tshenolo Larona Chaba, who holds a bachelor’s in earth and environmental sciences and is now pursuing a master’s in geological sciences, leads Conscientious Investments, which uses pyrolysis technology to convert waste tyres into pyrolysis oil and carbon black. Thata Pule Dioka, another undergraduate, created Sewage Circular Solutions, which aims to transform sewage waste into renewable energy, clean water, and fertiliser.
Then there is Antonio Kgosikoma, a mechatronics and industrial instrumentation student who has taken a different route out of the mining orbit altogether. His venture, SEKUTA, is developing affordable electric mobility solutions for the Southern African Development Community region. He has already attracted support from the MIT Kuo Sharper Centre and a pre-seed grant from MASA Innovation-evidence that at least some of these ventures are finding traction beyond the fellowship’s protective cocoon.
The MIT Connection
The partnership with MIT gives the programme a credibility boost that matters in a country where local institutions are still building their reputations. Dr. Haitham Khoury, an organizational psychologist and Fulbright scholar who directs student programs at the MIT Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, represents the American university’s stake in the fellowship.
Before taking his current role, Khoury authored a white paper titled “Pan-African Deeptech: Key to Sustainable Prosperity” and led research that continues to shape the MIT center’s programs and policy recommendations. His presence signals that BSEFP is not simply a capacity-building exercise for Botswana; it is also an experiment in how elite Western institutions can work with African universities to accelerate venture creation in emerging markets.
At the pitch night, Khoury said he had witnessed the fellows’ transformation from technically skilled scientists and engineers into entrepreneurs – a transition, he said, that was not easy and required significant commitment.
“One of the hardest problems, whether it’s in water, energy, health, agriculture, diversifying the economy, it will not be solved by importing somebody else’s answer,” Khoury told the audience. Instead, he said, solutions would come from people who understand both science and Botswana’s unique circumstances. “They will be solved by people like you and others in this room who understand the science, who understand Botswana and who have the courage to build.”
He said this was the philosophy underpinning the MIT Kuo Sharper Centre for Prosperity and Entrepreneurship: “Lasting prosperity comes from entrepreneurs and the innovation-driven enterprises that they build.”
A Test of More Than Talent
Whether that experiment succeeds will depend on what happens after Wednesday night. The pitch event, with its order of ceremonies, gift presentations, and certificate ceremonies, has the feel of a graduation -and graduations, by definition, mark an ending. The harder question is whether these ventures survive contact with the market, where no one is grading on effort.
Setbacks are, of course, the default outcome for early-stage ventures everywhere. Most startups fail. In Botswana, where venture capital is scarce, infrastructure gaps are real, and the regulatory environment for new businesses can be cumbersome, the failure rate is likely higher still.
Ramaphoi, for his part, said the fellowship emerged from a shared conviction between government and its MIT partners that Botswana’s prosperity must be built not only from natural resources but also from its people. He said the programme demonstrated what could happen when government policy was matched by execution and discipline, and he described it not merely as an academic exercise but as a deliberate policy instrument aimed at placing young Batswana at the centre of the national transformation agenda.
The programme director’s message to the fellows acknowledged the difficulty ahead. “The journey from an idea to a sustainable venture requires courage, resilience, discipline, and the willingness to learn from both progress and setbacks,” Professor Makepe wrote.
But the 15 fellows have already done something that most of their peers across the African continent have not been asked to do: they have treated their own technical expertise not as a qualification for a job but as raw material for a company. Whether any of their ventures succeed commercially, that shift in mindset, replicated across universities and institutions, may be the most consequential product of all.
Wednesday’s pitch night began at 6 p.m. at the Botswana Digital & Innovation Hub. The Minister of Higher Education, the Permanent Secretary for Trade and Entrepreneurship, and the acting vice chancellor of BIUST were all scheduled to speak. The fellows pitched in two rounds, seven in the first and seven in the second, with a health break in between.
Afterward, there was networking and refreshments. Then the year ended, and the real work began.
The BIUST Student Entrepreneurship Fellowship Programme is a partnership between the Government of Botswana and the MIT Kuo Sharper Centre for Prosperity and Entrepreneurship, delivered through the School of Business and Professional Development at the Botswana International University of Science and Technology.
