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DR DOUGLAS RASBASH*
Africa-Press – Botswana. Botswana can no longer afford inefficiency. Youth unemployment, climate risk and declining resource revenues demand precision and discipline. A new generation of leaders, planners and citizens expects more than promises. They expect delivery.
This month marks a turning point in Botswana’s economic story. In July 2025, the Government of Botswana launched its Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) — a bold and necessary step towards inclusive, sustainable and future-oriented development. But what many may not yet realise is that for the ETP to succeed, Botswana must go beyond picking the right projects. It must overhaul the very way it selects, prepares, implements and evaluates them.
In a quiet but significant shift, government officials, economists and planners have begun adopting what is known globally as Project Cycle Management (PCM). It is a discipline. A system. And above all, it is a commitment to do things right from the start — and to ensure that taxpayer money translates into real outcomes.
Six phases
PCM is not new. The World Bank, the African Development Bank and other major development partners have used it for decades. What is new is Botswana’s deliberate application of this system to its own transformation ideas.
PCM comprises six phases: programming, project identification and selection, preparation, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. It is logical, repeatable, and helps avoid the kind of fragmented, under-prepared or misaligned projects that have plagued governments across the continent.
To bring this home, consider the example of our transformation ideas. From public digital infrastructure to transport corridors, solar exports to smart agriculture, the ambition was inspiring. But ambition alone doesn’t deliver jobs or results. What followed was a Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA), ranking each idea based on 10 agreed criteria, including capital cost, economic impact, environmental footprint, and speed to implementation.
The first step in the process of systemising the selection of the long list of ideas submitted to the Ministry of Finance would be to list the mutually agreed key criteria that should be applied. Then, because each criterion may have differing levels of importance, to weigh them.
Each of the submitted transformation ideas was scored against these 10 criteria using a standardised scale (e.g. 1 to 5 or 1 to 10), where higher values indicated stronger performance. In keeping with the high-quality analytical tradition of The Botswana Gazette, ranking of the 20 indicative ETP ideas is shown in the figure.
But the work doesn’t stop there. These 20 ideas were then grouped into five transformation programmes: The Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) is anchored in a bold national ambition: to reposition Botswana’s economy for inclusive, sustainable, and future-ready growth. The key ETP objectives include:
Economic Diversification beyond Minerals
Job Creation, Particularly for Youth
Climate Resilience and Green Growth
Digital Transition and Innovation
Regional Integration and Trade Competitiveness
To move from strategic intent to tangible results, each of these objectives must be translated into coherent programmes – interlinked clusters of projects and policy reforms – that together create cumulative impact. This programme structure ensures that each transformation idea is not treated as a standalone project but as part of a larger investment ecosystem. This also allows ministries and stakeholders to plan resources, partnerships, and monitoring tools at the programme level, enhancing coherence and delivery capacity.
This shift from individual projects to programme-based planning is critical. It allows the government and partners to coordinate funding, avoid duplication and focus efforts on measurable outcomes.
And that brings us to perhaps the most overlooked part of the transformation journey: monitoring and evaluation. For too long, M&E has been seen as a compliance checkbox rather than a core management tool. The reader should note that outputs pertain to monitoring while outcomes relate to evaluation. While the Government of Botswana has focussed tracking the effectiveness of its development programmes on outputs, for the ETP to be truly transitional, it must adopt a more outcome-based orientation. Indicative ETP outputs and outcomes are shown.
The reform is not just technical. It is deeply political. For the ETP to work, institutions must collaborate in new ways. Programme Delivery Units (PDUs) must be hosted by line ministries but coordinated through a Central Delivery Secretariat, likely within the Ministry of Finance or Office of the President. A high-level ETP Steering Committee must ensure whole-of-government alignment. And crucially, Botswana must tap into donor partnerships, climate finance, and blended investment to scale its ambitions.
Transformation also brings risks: capacity gaps, resistance to change, political turnover. But PCM itself is a risk mitigation strategy. By requiring feasibility checks, stakeholder inputs, and logic-based preparation, the system avoids costly errors. It empowers civil servants and protects the public purse.
It is worth noting that this agenda is only indicative. Most of the work remains within government, being debated and refined. That is as it should be. But as the ETP gains traction, the public deserves to know that behind the scenes, Botswana is building not just new projects but a new way of governing transformation.
Foundational
Some may ask, why this level of sophistication now? The answer is simple. Because Botswana can no longer afford inefficiency. Because youth unemployment, climate risk, and declining resource revenues demand precision and discipline. And because a new generation of leaders, planners and citizens expects more than promises. They expect delivery.
In time, these reforms will find their way into budget systems, procurement rules and institutional mandates. But even now, they deserve attention, not because they are flashy but because they are foundational. Botswana is learning what the best-performing nations already know: that transformation is not just about what we do — it is about how we do it.
That is the real revolution underway. And it deserves our support.
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