Botswana has pushed harder against human trafficking than it did a year ago, yet it remains stranded short of the baseline the world has set for itself, hobbled by thinning budgets for the very programs meant to shield victims and forestall the crime, according to the 2026 Trafficking in Persons Report released by the United States Department of State. The report keeps Botswana on Tier 2, a designation that credits a government for mounting a...
The acting chief of the Bakgatla Ba Ga Mmanaana, Kgosi Oscar Mosielele, has asked Justice and Correctional Services Minister Nelson Ramaotwana to press the Master of the High Court to investigate a multimillion-pula dispute involving trustees linked to former President Mokgweetsi Masisi. In a letter dated Sept. 24 and seen by this publication, Mosielele said he was escalating the matter after more than four months without a response or acknowledgment from the Master. He had...
Bank of Botswana chose steadiness over surprise on Wednesday, leaving its main interest rate untouched for another cycle even as inflation retreated from the uncomfortable heights it reached in late summer. The decision, delivered after a meeting of the Bank of Botswana’s Monetary Policy Committee, keeps the Monetary Policy Rate anchored at 5.5 percent and signals that policymakers are prepared to wait out a stubborn price surge rather than choke off a fragile recovery. The...
Falcon Metal Resources Botswana (FMRB) has become the first 100% citizen-owned company to list on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). FMRB successfully listed on the ASX this Wednesday as part of a capital-raising exercise to expand exploration across its mining licences in Botswana’s various mineral belts. The company joined a group of international commercial heavyweights, with its initial public offering (IPO) taking place in the same timeframe as those of Israel’s Identifai Genetics and Australia’s...
For years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that Botswana’s growing public-sector wage bill is taking an ever-larger bite out of government revenue, leaving less money for development and essential services. In its 2025 Article IV consultation, the Fund recommended gradually reducing the bill to 11 percent of gross domestic product – a target that could force difficult choices about the size and cost of the civil service. Vice President and Finance Minister Ndaba...
Botswana has set out to raise P514 billion to remake its economy. The question now shadowing that ambition is a harder one: who will pay for it, and at what cost to the generations that come after.
The Botswana National Front (BNF) and some of its senior members have long argued that key government positions remain occupied by individuals appointed under the former Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) administration. Within the ruling Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), this has raised concerns about the implementation of its programmes and allegations of possible sabotage.
For decades, Botswana’s beef has been something close to a national emblem, a product of its disease-free rangelands and the state-owned commission that carries the country’s cattle economy onto European dinner tables.
The case had everything a corruption prosecution could want except the one thing it needed. There was a figure – 4,706,000 pula. There was a conduit, a company called Wisecreatives Investments.
In a government that has long prized consensus over speed, caution over conviction, Omphile John Sehurutshe arrived with a different instrument in his pocket: a stopwatch. As Deputy Permanent Secretary to the President responsible for High Priority Projects, he occupies one of the most consequential and least comfortable chairs in the Office of the President – a role invented, in effect, to make Botswana move faster than Botswana is accustomed to moving.
