- Sharon Molefe
Botswana is the best-positioned country in Southern Africa to realise its ambition of becoming a transport and logistics hub.
This is according to President Duma Gideon Boko, who was speaking at the Colloquium for Judges of the Court of Appeal in the capital on Wednesday.
In his keynote address, Boko articulated that Botswana is advantageously situated to provide linkages to South Africa, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, meaning that with the appropriate infrastructure, there is no reason why Botswana should not be a regional logistics hub.
“We are so strategically located that we can actually be and should have been a logistics and transportation hub. If we approach development in this manner, we then realise that we need to invest resources in developing world-class infrastructure which is both climate-resilient and world-class,” he said, referencing the need for world-class roads and airports, among others.
“The challenge for our country, through any government, has been the construction of world-class infrastructure,” he said.
The Head of State emphasised that for robust infrastructure to be created, Botswana, with its small population, would need to attract foreign direct investment (FDI), which he condensed into three possibilities: resource-based FDI, efficiency-based FDI, and market-seeking FDI.
In outlining further threats to Botswana’s ability to attract FDI and ensure development for the benefit of all, Boko explained that the country would need to develop robust processes and systems to prevent the leakage of national resources and ensure accountability for the use of funds by state-owned entities.
The Head of State explained that to achieve this, audits of national entities would be required to ascertain where the shortcomings have been, as well as to chart how these entities can be better managed going forward.
Boko further called for a deliberate effort to address processes and systems relating to financial flows to avoid grey-listing in 2027, as this would be counterproductive to the nation’s efforts to attract FDI.
