Botswana’s drive to diversify its economy is being stymied by entrenched divisions among research, policy, capital, and industry, experts warned at the Falling Walls Lab Gaborone.
The country struggles to translate innovation and research into viable commercial products and businesses, panelists said, calling for improved coordination, sustained investment in research, intellectual property development, and closer collaboration between universities, government, and the private sector.
The panel, titled “Which Walls Must Fall First?”, assembled policymakers, academics, investors, and international innovation experts to explore how Botswana can dismantle the structural obstacles keeping local innovations from reaching the marketplace.
Joel Ramaphoi, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Trade and Entrepreneurship, identified Botswana’s chief challenge as the lack of connection between the ecosystems responsible for innovation. “There’s clearly a misalignment between these three ecosystems, and they actually happen to be working in silos,” he said. “Our academic world has been focusing on pure economics and the objective has been students getting degrees, masters or PhDs. We need to ask how the outcomes of R&D activities can be converted into commercial products.”
Ramaphoi pointed to the country’s weak commercialization of research as a key factor behind its limited manufacturing base and poor patent performance. He emphasized the need to incentivize researchers to protect and commercialize intellectual property. “We failed to build a foundation of protected locally owned IP. We don’t see the R&D outcome converting into commercialization processes. Our researchers are not incentivized to file patents, and when we look at the patent filing rates for Botswana, it’s one of the lowest,” he said.
He also challenged Botswana to rethink how intellectual property is perceived, urging a shift from viewing it as merely a legal formality to recognizing it as a commercial asset. “The IP ecosystem treats IP as a legal and respective checklist rather than a free commercial tool. We need to integrate IP in the curriculum for all other disciplines within the university. The mindset we need to inculcate is for students to create their own companies, create jobs and employ others,” Ramaphoi added.
A CENTRALIZED TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
Dr. Rudolph Boy, Entrepreneurship Lecturer at the University of Botswana, proposed creating a centralized Technology Transfer Office framework to connect universities, researchers, traditional knowledge holders, and industry. Such a structure, he said, would eliminate duplication and ensure research systematically moves from laboratories to incubation and ultimately to commercialization. “The Technology Transfer Office framework will lead universities and researchers, and traditional technology and traditional knowledge also need to be within this framework. After R&D has been done, the output will move into evaluation, technology transfer and protection of the IP. Everything will be centralized from that office,” Boy explained.
He outlined a clear pathway from research and development to commercialization, with universities and private companies playing active roles in incubation. “It will move from R&D to the Technology Transfer Office, then into incubation. After incubating the ideas, we move into commercialization. That will help us as a country to move away from thinking ‘can this work?’ to thinking ‘can this be commercialized?’”
ANGEL INVESTORS PROVE CAPITAL CAN FLOW
Mythri Sambasivan-George, Chairperson of Angel Network Botswana, highlighted the expanding role of private capital in supporting entrepreneurs across Africa and Botswana. The network has grown to over 50 angel members and invested in more than 130 startups continent-wide, including five Botswana businesses, with two more under due diligence. “In just seven short years, we’ve been able to amass over 50 angel members. We have been able, with the money that our angels at their own discretion put forward, to invest into over 130 startups across Africa. Five of those are Botswana businesses and two additional ones are going through due diligence,” she said.
Sambasivan-George emphasized that investment goes beyond funding; it involves preparing entrepreneurs to be investment-ready by strengthening their products, branding, packaging, and market understanding. “We worked on things like your brand, your packaging and the consistency of your product. We featured founders who are looking at what the customer wants and what the market lacks. They are not obsessed with the solution; they are obsessed with the customer, the market and the market’s problems,” she explained.
She stressed Botswana’s wealth of entrepreneurial and professional talent and the potential to connect it to broader African and global capital markets. “We don’t lack talent in Botswana. Botswana has amazing entrepreneurial, academic and professional talent and capability. By connecting from Botswana into the Africa Business Angels Network and into the world, we can access not just talent pools but also diaspora funding and other funding,” Sambasivan-George said.
A CALL FOR LONG-TERM VISION AND EXPORT FOCUS
Taavi Erkkola, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lead from Finland, drew parallels between Botswana’s current economic crossroads and Finland’s experience two decades ago when the collapse of its mobile-phone industry forced a national rethink. “Finland had that point in time when Nokia was ruling the market, and when the phone market crashed, the industry kind of vanished. The nation had to re-look at how to rebuild the tech sector. I see Botswana being in that very same situation right now with the diamond industry and agriculture,” he said.
Erkkola stressed that economic transformation requires sustained national commitment beyond political cycles. “National coordination of research, development, investment and innovation has to be a consistent effort that is not a matter of one government or one four-year cycle. It’s not a project; it’s a national vision that has to stay there for 20 or 25 years,” he said.
He warned against focusing innovation solely on Botswana’s domestic market, citing the country’s small economy as a reason to prioritize export-oriented innovation from the start. “Botswana is a small market and it has to strongly already focus on export. It needs to start from the ideation phase. The market alone is not enough if we think of the survival of the nation in this market economy, so those investments need to start already with the view of export,” Erkkola said.
He also urged institutions to shift from gatekeepers to enablers of innovation, especially by improving access to government-held data. “There are walls that need to be broken down, but there are bridges that need to be built. If institutions are gatekeepers, they need to change the mindset of being a gatekeeper. They need to become enablers,” he said.
THE LARGER CHALLENGE
Discussions underscored that Botswana’s innovation hurdles cannot be overcome by tackling one barrier alone. Policy without coordination, research without commercialization, capital without investment-ready businesses, and infrastructure without access to markets all risk producing fragmented outcomes. The consensus pointed to the need for an integrated innovation pipeline that links research, intellectual property, funding, incubation, commercialization, and export markets.