Africa-Press – Botswana. A few weeks ago, Botswana stood on the cusp of a bold economic rebirth. In a packed Gaborone conference hall, President Duma Boko and, Vice President Ndaba Gaolathe, unveiled the Botswana Economic Transformation Programme (BETP) with fanfare and hope.
After decades of a diamond-fuelled economy and abstract plans buried in mountains of reports, here at last was a promise of something different – a radical departure from business as usual. The strategy was as novel as it was ambitious: “economic laboratories” would be convened as war-room workshops to fast-track solutions in key sectors. Government officials, private investors, and experts would lock themselves in these labs for weeks, dissecting problems and designing “Big Fast Results.” The air was electric with possibility.
At long tables, ministers rubbed shoulders with CEOs and young innovators, all poring over data and drawing up action plans on butcher paper. After so many years of incremental change and stagnation, Botswana was daring to dream of big, fast transformation. President Boko captured the mood, declaring a “grand mission to dismantle bureaucratic inertia and build a fast and fearless delivery cadre.” It was an oath to shake up the status quo and ignite a new era of results-driven governance. From the outset, the Botswana Economic Transformation Programme identified several priority arenas for reinvention. Energy security was high on the list, with persistent power shortages and reliance on imports hampering industry; an energy lab would strategize how to unleash Botswana’s solar potential and expand the national grid. Manufacturing and industrialization formed another pillar, seeking to diversify beyond diamonds by nurturing local factories and processing plants to create jobs and value-added exports. Agriculture, too, beckoned for transformation – a sector rich in potential yet constrained by arid land and old methods.
A dedicated agriculture lab was envisioned to modernise farming, improve water management, and boost food security, reducing heavy import bills. Other labs would delve into tourism, finance, and infrastructure, all aimed at stitching together a diversified, resilient economy.
These thematic laboratories embodied a break from traditional top-down planning; instead of ministers alone deciding policy, a cross-section of stakeholders would collaboratively design actionable projects in real-time. Inside the labs, one could imagine the intensity: maps of power lines or irrigation systems spread across tables, spirited debates between technocrats and entrepreneurs, and the whir of laptops modelling outcomes.
Each lab promised to yield a slate of “quick wins” and flagship projects to jolt each sector onto a high-growth path. By design, this approach was meant to bulldoze through the bureaucratic sluggishness that had long frustrated execution of good ideas. The labs would “unlock bottlenecks, eliminate bureaucracy and provide single-window clarity” for investors and initiatives, sparing projects from dying in the tangle of red tape.
Yet amid this flurry of sectoral excitement and visionary rhetoric, the architects of Botswana’s transformation overlooked the very foundation that underpins all others: the machinery of government itself. In their eagerness to launch labs on energy, manufacturing, agriculture and more, President Boko’s administration and its advisors missed a pivotal first step – subjecting Government Delivery Efficiency to the same rigorous laboratory treatment. Put simply, the most critical “sector” of all – the capacity of government to deliver – was left unexamined as a dedicated project.
It was a curious omission
Here was a programme explicitly aimed at dismantling bureaucratic inertia, yet it did not begin by systematically re-inventing the bureaucracy. The oversight was not for lack of insight; in speeches, the President extolled examples like Singapore and Dubai, where visionary governments drove rapid development by understanding how to engage the private sector and by running the public sector with business-like precision. He spoke of unlocking the “latent intelligence and potentialities within our public sector,” and envisioned a civil service that is “a laboratory of forward-thinking policy, digital delivery and citizen-focused operational readiness.” These words acknowledged that transformative economic ideas would mean little if executed by a stagnant, demotivated public service. And still, when the time came to choose the first labs, the spotlight shone elsewhere – on tangible industries and sectors outwardly visible to the economy – while the engine of implementation, the government itself, remained under its old tune. This choice – or lack thereof – was a missed opportunity of profound significance. Government Delivery Efficiency may sound abstract compared to the concreteness of megawatts of electricity or tons of beef production, but it is the invisible catalyst that determines whether any grand plan thrives or withers. It is the keystone that supports the entire arch of national transformation. Without a deliberate and thorough reform of how the government delivers services, even the best-conceived projects could stumble. For decades, Botswana’s civil service was regarded as one of Africa’s more capable and honest bureaucracies, underpinning the country’s reputation for stability and good governance. But over time, especially in the dozen or so years before the new administration took office, cracks had begun to show. The complacency of unbroken one-party dominance, combined with a commodity boom that perhaps lessened pressure to innovate, led to institutions that could be ponderous and overly procedural. President Boko’s team inherited a government apparatus that was professional but cautious, competent yet far too comfortable with the slow rhythms of status quo. In the words of Vice President Gaolathe, the previous regime had let fiscal discipline lapse and allowed politics to trump technocratic decision-making – a culture that “threw away priorities and emphasis on investing for the future” and even permitted corruption to creep in. Such an environment does not breed the kind of agility and bold execution that the BETP’s success requires. If ministries and agencies remain mired in old habits – siloed thinking, fear of taking responsibility, endless consultations with no decision, or a “not invented here” dismissal of outside ideas – the transformative projects emerging from the labs would risk being smothered at birth. The premise of the economic labs approach is to compress timeframes and solve problems collaboratively and quickly. But this very premise bumps up against the reality of a civil service used to hierarchical decision-making and careful, deliberative pace. The lab may produce a brilliant blueprint for, say, an integrated solar farm network within weeks. Yet to implement it, one still must navigate the ministry of energy’s procurement rules, the lands bureaucracy for site permits, the utility’s procedures for grid connection, and perhaps environmental clearances from another department. If each of those steps is handled by officials who are reluctant to innovate or lack motivation to push through obstacles, the project can still stall despite the lab’s best efforts. In effect, the labs might design a race car, but that race car must still drive on the existing roads – if those roads (processes) are full of potholes or roadblocks, the drive will be slow and bumpy. Government Delivery Efficiency is about repaving and widening those roads before sending the speedy new cars down them. It means reforming processes, but also hearts and minds in the public sector. It asks: How can civil servants become not gatekeepers of procedure, but enablers of progress? How can the public sector embrace the “private sector mindset” of urgency, accountability, and innovation, while still upholding public interest and fairness?
Had the Botswana Economic Transformation Programme begun with a lab dedicated to Government Delivery Efficiency, it would have signalled a revolutionary mindset shift at the very core. Such a lab would gather senior ministry officials, frontline civil servants, reform-minded advisors, and perhaps seasoned business managers in a room to diagnose the government’s own performance gaps with brutal honesty.
They would map out the journey of a policy from conception to execution and pinpoint where delays and dysfunction occur – whether due to redundant approval layers, unclear mandates, skill gaps, or misaligned incentives. They would confront the “bureaucratic inertia” head on, not merely as an abstract foe to be vanquished in speeches, but as a tangible problem with specific causes and cures. One could imagine the candour of that lab’s discussions: Permanent Secretaries admitting that their departments often work in silos with little coordination; project managers noting that budget disbursements take months to be authorized; younger officers carefully pointing out how a culture of deference to “how things have always been” stifles any creativity. The lab would not be about assigning blame, but about reimagining the government’s modus operandi. With PEMANDU Associates facilitating, known for their no-nonsense focus on Key Performance Indicators and dashboards, the government delivery Lab could set targets like reducing permit approval times by 50%, or ensuring that inter-ministerial projects have a single lead authority instead of being lost among committees.
They might design a new “delivery unit” in the President’s office to track and unblock progress weekly, a concept that worked wonders in Malaysia’s own transformation journey. They could craft incentive structures where public officers are recognized and rewarded for solving problems quickly and collaboratively, rather than merely for years of tenure. In short, this lab would strive to cultivate that “fast and fearless delivery cadre” the President envisioned – a new breed of civil servants as comfortable with bold action as they historically were with cautious file-pushing. The benefits of starting with such an internal transformation are both immediate and far-reaching. In the short term, a Government Delivery Efficiency initiative would create a cadre of motivated bureaucrats who themselves have just been through an intense problem-solving experience. Fresh out of their own lab, these officials would return to their ministries energized and equipped with new tools: perhaps a simplified process here, a clearer mandate there, and a network of interdepartmental contacts made during the lab to call upon when an issue spans agencies.
They would have seen first-hand the power of breaking silos and would be primed to apply that ethos to the upcoming sectoral projects. For example, when the energy lab’s solar farm project hits a regulatory snag, instead of shrugging and citing rules, an officer from the newly transformed Department of Lands might proactively liaise with colleagues in energy and environment to resolve it, recalling how, in the efficiency lab, they had pledged to cut through each other’s red tape. In essence, the government would have its own transformation champions embedded across departments, people who can translate the urgency of the labs into day-to-day administrative action. In the long term as well, the ripple effects could be profound.
By institutionalising efficiency and a results-oriented culture, Botswana’s public sector would become a fertile soil in which all future policies can take root. Today it’s the Economic Transformation Programme’s projects that need nurturing; tomorrow there will be new challenges, new goals. A government geared toward continuous improvement and innovation is an asset that keeps yielding returns beyond one programme or one administration’s lifespan. Consider the pursuit of a diversified economy: It requires not just one-off projects, but an ongoing stream of reforms and initiatives as global conditions change.
An efficient government can better respond to, say, a sudden opportunity in the digital services sector, or the emergence of a new technology in agriculture, because it has built-in mechanisms to learn, adapt, and act decisively. Furthermore, a civil service that visibly works faster and smarter would build credibility with investors and the public. One of Botswana’s perennial challenges has been converting its excellent policies on paper into palpable outcomes for citizens. When people see quicker turnaround times for public services, or see infrastructure projects completed on schedule, trust in government grows – a crucial ingredient for any transformation programme’s political sustainability. It’s the difference between scepticism (“we’ve heard grand plans before”) and optimism (“this time things are visibly changing”). The narrative of transformation then reinforces itself: success in implementation begets public support, which gives leaders the mandate and confidence to push even more daring reforms.
By not commencing with a Government Delivery Efficiency lab, the BETP’s rollout arguably put the cart before the horse. The programme launched with great momentum in the outward-facing sectors – and indeed, it harvested an impressive 1,300+ proposals from enthusiastic citizens and investors eager to help reinvent energy, agriculture, and more. But as those proposals funnel into the formal planning and implementation channels, they inevitably confront the old machinery of state. Some of that machinery is creaking under fiscal strain – evidenced by a liquidity crunch that barely allowed the government to meet its own wage bill, a symptom of years of financial mismanagement and over-reliance on diamonds. Other parts of the machinery are simply not accustomed to the frenetic pace that Big Fast Results demand. Imagine a newly approved manufacturing project needing factory permits expedited: if the officials in charge see this as just another file in the tray, and not as a make-or-break nation-building effort, delays will follow. The clock, which the lab methodology tries so hard to beat, will tick away as usual. In contrast, had a delivery efficiency lab reformed these processes beforehand, those same officials would approach their tasks differently – perhaps empowered to use a fast-track channel for transformation-priority projects, or even having digital systems in place to cut out weeks of paperwork. They would share a sense of urgency and pride that this is a priority for our nation, and I am accountable for making it happen.
That mindset shift is priceless
It turns the civil service from a passive bureaucracy into an active partner of development. Critically, focusing first on government efficiency does not mean delaying sectoral progress – on the contrary, it lays the groundwork for it. The time spent tuning the engine of governance would be amply repaid by the speed and success with which it then delivers.
There is a poetic irony in the idea that to go fast, one must first slow down and prepare. The few months dedicated to an internal government lab would have been a quiet revolution: largely invisible to the public, perhaps, but setting in motion a culture change that everyone would soon feel in improved services and swifter outcomes. In the grand storyline of Botswana’s transformation, that foundational work would likely never grab headlines like a groundbreaking for a new solar plant or the ribbon-cutting of a factory. But it would be the invisible hand guiding all those public triumphs to fruition. It would also send a powerful message: that this government is unafraid to reform itself with the same vigour with which it intends to reform the economy.
Such humility and willingness to self-correct can inspire confidence at home and respect abroad. A state that sharpens its own tools before striking out to sculpt the future is a state that understands the art of lasting change. In hindsight, as the BETP’s initial wave unfolds, the absence of a dedicated Government Delivery Efficiency initiative is a lesson in strategy. The PEMANDU philosophy that Botswana imported was forged in places that learned the necessity of coupling economic plans with government transformation. Malaysia, from which PEMANDU’s methodology originates, pursued a Government Transformation Programme alongside its Economic Transformation Programme – acknowledging that you tackle both the “what” (sectors to grow) and the “how” (the system to implement) in tandem. Botswana’s leadership clearly grasped this intellectually – their words reflect an acute awareness that the “world-class, fully actionable execution framework” is as important as the projects it would execute. And yet, translating that awareness into an actionable first project – essentially, making the government’s overhaul Project Zero – did not happen initially. Perhaps it was politically delicate: asking civil servants to scrutinize themselves can be sensitive, especially for a new government that may have wanted to avoid unsettling the bureaucracy all at once. Or perhaps the allure of announcing visible sectoral wins took precedence – after all, a new solar farm or a beef export agreement is easier to celebrate in a rally than an internal process reform. Whatever the reasons, the result is that Botswana marched into battle with an army of change agents that had not first been fully retrained for a new kind of warfare.
The good news is that this missed opportunity is not a permanent loss but a gap that can still be closed. As the labs on energy, manufacturing, agriculture and others yield their recommendations, it will become ever clearer which bureaucratic hurdles threaten to slow them. That clarity can still spark a mid-course correction: an intensive push to reform government delivery can be launched even as the first projects start. It may not have the symbolic elegance of being “first,” but it can draw on early lessons to target the most urgent choke points. In essence, the story of Botswana’s transformation is still being written, and the chapter on government efficiency might simply be coming later than ideal – but better late than never. For the narrative to reach a truly triumphant climax, the heroes of this tale – the civil servants, the ministers, the planners on the ground – must themselves undergo a transformation. They must become the very change they are tasked to deliver.
In conclusion, the initial launch of the Botswana Economic Transformation Programme showcased vision, courage, and an embrace of innovative methodology. It kindled excitement by taking on big challenges in energy, industry, and agriculture through a fresh collaborative approach. But like a magnificent building designed with awe-inspiring towers and domes, its architects nearly forgot the bedrock beneath: the capacity of the government to carry the weight of those ambitions. The omission of a Government Delivery Efficiency focus at the outset was a silent flaw in the blueprint – not obvious amid the celebratory groundbreaking, but potentially undermining the structure over time. A wise builder, upon recognising a foundational weakness, does not shy away from reinforcing it. Likewise, Botswana’s leaders, President Boko and Vice President Gaolathe, still have the chance to fortify the foundation of their transformation agenda by renewing their focus on the engine of delivery. In doing so, they would empower a new cadre of officials who move with purpose and accountability, turning lofty plans into lived reality.
The most important lesson here is one as old as governance itself: no nation can rise on the wings of grand plans alone – it must also have feet solidly planted in effective institutions. If Botswana seizes that lesson, ensuring that its government becomes as efficient, agile, and inspired as the future it strives for, then the success of the entire transformation programme will not only be likely – it will be inevitable.
Dr Teedzani Thapelo* is author of the recently published books; Kenneth Koma and the Revolutionary Spirit in Botswana Political Culture (2025), Duma Boko Government and Policy Reform in Post-BDP New Botswana (2025), and Umbrella For Democratic Change: Road To New Botswana (2025)
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