Africa-Press – Botswana. Botswana is reimagining itself, not as a landlocked state but as a land-linked catalyst.
This was said by Vice President, Mr Ndaba Gaolathe when addressing George Washington University in the United States recently on the topic; The Future of Finance and Trade in Africa: A Vision for a new Botswana.
Mr Gaolathe said government was laying the groundwork for sovereign wealth driven by intelligence, investing in block-chain backed logistics, cross-border financial technologies and trade corridors that marry digital infrastructure with ecological sustainability.
“Our borders are not barriers, but bridges. Our institutions are not remnants of the past, but instruments of the future,” Mr Gaolathe said.
He further said government was working toward a new fiscal philosophy where the state was not just a regulator, but a collaborator with private sector and civil society.
Under the new vision, Mr Gaolathe said Botswana shall re-anchor its trade policy away from extraction and into transformation.
“We are crafting trade policy with the same care our elders-built homesteads, with foresight, with rootedness, with respect for the unseen. We are anchoring our finance not in the speculative excesses that have hurt the world, but in productive investments, climate resilience and inclusive entrepreneurship,” he said.
“We envision a Botswana that leads in carbon-neutral trade, a country that becomes the logistics capital of Southern Africa, a fintech sandbox for continental integration. We are spearheading reforms in public procurement, capital markets, and digital identity to ensure that our systems speak the language of tomorrow,” he added.
He further said Botswana’s beef would under the new vision not just feed the world but would also be branded with integrity and traceability while the country’s indigenous knowledge would inform the creation of African intellectual property rights.
The Vice President also said the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) was just not a policy instrument but rather the boldest expression of African unity since the founding of the Organisation of African Unity.
He indicated that Africa had always traded, not merely goods but ideas, values and technologies.
With the implementation of AfCFTA, Mr Gaolathe said, Africans were remembering who they were and who they had always been thus the need to reimagine trade as a tool for justice, dignity and development.
He empathised the importance to regard finance and trade not as neutral flows of capital and commodities but as levers to redesign society.
“The Africa we are building will be digitally integrated where payments and logistics leap across borders with the speed of thought and where trade creates jobs not only in mining and agriculture but in biotech and digital artistry,” he said. Mr Gaolathe thus said Africa was under AfCFTA, writing the rules of a new civilisation, one that valued fairness over dominance and cooperation over coercion.
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