For one full day in the first week of this month, the Gaborone International Convention Centre became more than just a venue. It transformed into a proving ground for an idea that Botswana’s leadership has bet the next decade on: that a nation can reshape its own economy right before the eyes of the investors, financiers, and CEOs it needs to build that future.
The inaugural Botswana CEO Roundtable, held under the banner “Towards a $40 Billion Economy by 2036,” attracted a strong turnout of chief executives, board chairpersons, diplomats, development partners, and business leaders from across the region. It was clear evidence that when the CEO Africa Roundtable launches a new chapter, the room fills up fast. For the organizers, this was a great problem to have.
But the real story wasn’t the crowd. It was the openness. Government didn’t show up with polished slogans or staged photo ops. Instead, it came armed with a roadmap, a frank admission that the old model has run its course, and a clear call to action for everyone in the room.
Botswana now joins a network that already gathers CEOs and policymakers from Zimbabwe, Zambia, Nigeria, Malawi, Uganda, and beyond. Bringing this platform to Gaborone was itself a statement – one that the ministers who spoke this week both acknowledged and put to the test.
A DIPLOMAT OPENS THE DOOR
The first voice to set the tone was Honourable Phenyo Butale, Minister of International Relations. He welcomed delegates on behalf of the Botswana government and introduced the Guest of Honour. His words framed diplomacy not as a ceremonial task but as a tool for economic transformation.
“Diplomacy today is no longer only about flags and protocol,” Minister Butale told the audience. “It is about opening markets, de-risking investment, and standing behind our private sector as it competes regionally and globally. Every trade mission we undertake, every bilateral agreement we sign, every investor we host, is ultimately in service of the conversations happening here today.”
He was equally straightforward about why a platform like the CEO Africa Roundtable matters for a government in transition. “We do not see CEO ART as a guest in our economy,” he said. “We see it as a partner in building it.”
Perhaps the line that stuck longest with delegates came when Minister Butale described the purpose of a policy dialogue platform: “This Administration would rather hear a hard truth from a CEO in a room like this than a soft one in a press release.” It was a rare, candid invitation from government to the private sector, setting the tone for everything that followed.
He drew three clear connections between government action and the Roundtable’s agenda: regional trade corridors like the Kazungula Bridge arrangements with Zambia and renewed SADC agreements, which offer shorter, cheaper routes to market; utility-scale solar projects now breaking ground; and a culture of policy dialogue where, in his words, “capital goes where it is welcomed, protected, and put to productive use.”
THE MINISTER WITH THE MAP
If Minister Butale opened the door, Honourable Tiroeaone Ntsima, Minister of Trade and Entrepreneurship, took delegates on a full tour. Speaking on behalf of His Excellency President Advocate Duma Boko, Minister Ntsima laid out Botswana’s diversification thesis, sector by sector.
He began with a blunt diagnosis of the economy Botswana inherited. “An economy anchored to one resource is not a sovereign economy,” he said. “It is a hostage economy.” For more than five decades, Botswana’s growth story had largely been a diamond story – one that lifted the country to upper middle-income status but left it vulnerable to the ups and downs of global demand.
“President Boko’s government was not elected to manage decline gracefully,” Minister Ntsima said. “We were elected to change the structure of this economy.”
What followed wasn’t a speech – it was a set of instructions to capital. Minister Ntsima walked delegates through six frontiers that form Botswana’s national diversification thesis: agriculture and agribusiness, where he argued the country could move “from importer to regional supplier within this decade”; resource beneficiation, supported by amendments to the Mines and Minerals Act designed to keep processing and refining onshore; investment and trade positioning, built on the African Continental Free Trade Area and an Investor Hosting Centre that exists, in his words, “to compress the distance between a good project and a signed deal”; the digital and artificial intelligence economy; tourism, including the meetings and convention economy the Roundtable itself was demonstrating; and energy, where he called for “power purchase frameworks bankable enough to bring your balance sheets, not just your goodwill.”
He was equally clear about government’s own role, describing a mandate to “remove friction and de-risk capital” through reforms in business registration and licensing, and through institutions like the Botswana Investment and Trade Centre and the National Development Bank, which he said are “being sharpened to move at the speed of business, not the speed of bureaucracy.”
His closing ask was threefold: evaluate Botswana project by project rather than headline by headline; bring more than capital; including technology transfer, management skills, and networks; and stay engaged beyond the Roundtable itself. “Botswana’s next chapter will not be written by chance, and it will not be written by government alone,” he said. “It will be written by the deliberate choices of builders.”
A PLATFORM FOR TESTING THE THESIS
The ministers set the stage, but the working sessions gave delegates the chance to test the vision. Among the voices pushing the conversation forward was Lilian Costa Scheepers, CEO of the Botswana Agricultural Marketing Board, whose involvement brought the agriculture frontier Minister Ntsima described directly in front of the private sector players best positioned to finance it.
Delegates dove into sessions on energy financing, artificial intelligence as a growth enabler, and trade facilitation; each one a direct extension of the six frontiers laid out from the podium. The agriculture and agribusiness discussions put Minister Ntsima’s claim to the test that Botswana could shift from importer to regional supplier within a decade. Zimbabwean agro-processing entrepreneur Lesley Marange painted a vivid picture of this potential, having built a business recognized across Africa, Asia, and Europe, starting with limited capital; from a home-based industry to a full-fledged processing plant with multiple global distribution channels.
This mix of ministerial ambition followed immediately by sector-level scrutiny has become the hallmark of CEO Africa Roundtable gatherings. Speeches don’t close the program; they open the working sessions that follow.
WHAT THE ROOM REAFFIRMED
If there was one institutional thread running through both ministerial addresses, it was the Investor Hosting Centre. Mentioned by name as the mechanism Botswana plans to use to turn Roundtable conversations into signed deals, its reaffirmation wasn’t about unveiling something new but signaling that government sees it as central, not peripheral, to the $40 billion goal.
That distinction matters. Roundtables like this succeed or fail not on speeches but on what happens after delegates leave. Botswana’s ministers made it clear: the tools for follow-through already exist and are sharpening. Now the private sector’s job is to use them.
THE ROAD TO CAPE TOWN
Gaborone’s inaugural session fits into a broader calendar. The CEO Africa Roundtable’s network is carrying this momentum toward the Zimbabwe, Zambia, and DRC Roundtable in Lusaka this September, then onward to the flagship CEO Africa Annual Roundtable, returning to the Lagoon Beach Hotel in Cape Town from October 6 to 10, 2026, themed “The Future of Africa: Innovate, Trade, and Grow.”
For delegates who found Botswana’s straightforward talk compelling, that October gathering will offer the next chance to push these questions at a continental scale: where is capital flowing, what are governments willing to do to earn it, and what are builders prepared to bring beyond their balance sheets?
The two theses are really one. Cape Town will ask what innovation, trade, and growth look like across Africa. Gaborone spent a day answering that question for one country, sector by sector, minister by minister, in a room built for exactly that kind of honesty.
Botswana has opened its boardroom. What it does with the attention it has drawn will be the real test of the decade. The CEO Africa Roundtable intends to watch – and convene – every step of the way.