Botswana - South Africa Business Forum

Thursday, 21 May 2026

Programme Director
Your Excellency, President Duma Gideon Boko,
Honourable Ministers and Officials,
Business Leaders from Botswana and South Africa,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is an honour for me to address this Business Forum on the margins of the 6th Bi-National Commission between Botswana and South Africa.

Over the last few days, our Ministers and Officials have discussed measures to strengthen our political, social, economic and security relations.

In my meeting earlier today with President Boko, we agreed that one of our greatest tasks of the moment is to further deepen trade and investment relations between our two countries.

Business has a central role in achieving our ambitions for shared and sustainable prosperity.

Botswana and South Africa are neighbouring countries, but one people.

We have a common history and a shared future.

Our economic interests are closely intertwined. We must therefore seek mutually beneficial growth that creates jobs in equal measure for Botswana and South Africans.

We each have substantial natural resources and developed industrial capacity that we must harness.

There are several areas in which greater economic cooperation will yield significant benefits.

The first of these is agriculture.

We are both nations of farmers, with agricultural industries that have been developed over decades.

We both have ambitions to further develop these industries and to expand our agro-processing capabilities.

We want to derive more value from our land.

In pursuing these ambitions, there is great scope for us to work together.

We need to have cooperative mechanisms to manage the flow of agricultural goods between our countries to ensure predictability and sustainability.

Through the Bi-National Commission we have endorsed measures to holistically address these matters, including the placing of restrictions on imports of certain goods.

There is a commitment to pursue cooperation in the production of vaccines to fight animal diseases.

We are grateful to the government of Botswana for facilitating the delivery of significant doses of vaccines to South Africa to combat foot and mouth disease.

We also need to work together to address the effects of climate change on agricultural industries, especially as large parts of our respective countries are already water scarce.

Our agricultural industries are increasingly vulnerable to cycles of drought and flooding.

We are therefore committed to greater scientific and technical cooperation, and sharing of technology and best practice.

The second area of economic cooperation is in infrastructure.

Infrastructure is vital to get agricultural produce and manufactured goods to markets. It is vital to powering factories and mines, to irrigating crops, to supplying businesses and homes with water, and to enabling the rapid flow of information over great distances.

Infrastructure is vital for driving industrialisation and facilitating trade.

We therefore support plans to establish a One Stop Border Post at Tlokweng/Kopfontein.

This will help reduce congestion at the border, facilitate trade and enhance the efficient movement of people and goods between our countries.

Another cross-border venture is the proposed Lesotho-Botswana Water Transfer Project, which would bring water from Lesotho across South Africa and to Botswana.

Together with the Ramotswa Transboundary Aquifer, this initiative will support water security into the future, while enabling sustainable growth and development.

Our two rail corporations, Transnet and Botswana Rail, are working together towards the establishment of the Mmamabula-Lephalale rail line.

It is expected that this would be able to transport 18 million tons of cargo a year on a 117 km rail link stretch that straddles the two countries.

A third area of cooperation is in energy.

Our two countries are endowed with an abundant supply of solar energy, which should be harnessed both to power our economies and to produce green hydrogen for the broader global market.

We commend Botswana Power and Eskom for the agreements they have reached to strengthen energy resilience, improve grid stability and maintain our power stations.

In the long-term, our two countries must consider an energy corridor that locates our renewable generation sites along our borders and the linking of integrated grids.

There is a compelling case for co-investment through public private partnerships to link the power and energy capacities of our two countries.

The fourth area of cooperation is in mineral extraction and beneficiation.

The bedrock of our wealth through gold and diamond deposits is known the world over, and we have long relied on gold and diamonds for our economic growth. As a result, we have suffered the effects of 'boom or bust' price fluctuations.

We therefore need to build more resilient mining industries to make our economies more resilient.

The critical and rare earths minerals that we possess provide such an opportunity.

They compel us to collaborate in diversifying our mining and mineral-beneficiation sectors.

Our two countries have significant deposits of copper, manganese, lithium and platinum group metals, for which the global demand continues to grow.

But we will not realise the real value of these minerals if we continue to export them in their raw form.

By exporting raw minerals, we are in effect exporting jobs, creating businesses in other countries and handing away the prosperity of our people.

We must use our proximity and our collective capabilities to work together to beneficiate our minerals at source.

We should use the SADC Industrialisation Strategy and Roadmap to guide this work and inform our own domestic industrial policies.

We must also deepen the work already underway for frameworks that define mineral beneficiation not just from a domestic vantage point, but from a bilateral and regional perspective.

Our development finance institutions and commercial banks must help to fund and de-risk these efforts.

We must leverage our international partnerships to develop our processing capability, ensure technology transfer and meaningfully participate in electrical vehicle battery manufacturing.

Out of our discussions over the last few days, the governments of Botswana and South Africa have ambitious plans for driving inclusive economic growth through close collaboration.

We invite the business communities in our two countries to embrace that ambition and to deploy their substantial resources, capabilities and energies to foster greater trade and investment.

Through this, we can together create sustainable employment, establish new industries, invest in infrastructure and derive greater value from our abundant natural resources.

We are two countries with one mission: to build a prosperous and secure future for all our people.

Your presence here is a firm statement of your commitment to that mission.

Kelebogile go menagane!

I thank you.