A Productivity Focused Analysis of Agricultural Interventions in the 2025 State of Nation Address
The 2025 SONA sets a bold target of raising Botswana’s agricultural share of GDP from two (2) percent to at least six (6) percent in the near term. This is a goal that is both ambitious and urgently necessary in Botswana’s shifting economic landscape. For decades, national prosperity has anchored on the diamond revenues and the robust fiscal buffers it provided. That financial cushion allowed Botswana to absorb external shocks, smooth over economic slowdowns, and fund expansive public programmes with relative ease. But that era is ending. Diamond output is declining, global sales are volatile, and fiscal space has tightened to its narrowest point in years.
If Botswana is to chart a new path forward, productivity must become the engine of growth. With natural resources constrained, what the country possesses in abundance is its people. Hence, unlocking their productivity, especially within agriculture where the majority of rural livelihoods depend, is now Botswana’s most powerful untapped resource. It is against this backdrop that this article provides a productivity-focused analysis of the 2025 SONA’s agricultural commitments, identifying strengths, gaps, and implementation risks. It establishes how productivity initiatives can strengthen the proposed reforms and help reposition agriculture as a pillar of inclusive growth, job creation, and national resilience.
Livestock Production
No sector embodies Botswana’s agricultural identity more than livestock. It is both the backbone of rural livelihoods and a critical source of export revenue since independence. Yet as President Duma Boko acknowledged in the SONA, the national herd has dwindled from over three(3) million in the 1970s to 1.7 million today. Off-take rates are stuck at six (6) percent instead of the recommended 15 percent, undermined by recurring droughts, disease outbreaks, rangeland degradation, and entrenched management inefficiencies.
The SONA’s target to rebuild the herd to five (5) million by 2030 signals ambition, but numbers alone will not fix the underlying productivity problem. The newly launched Beef Programme introduces important interventions such as strengthened extension support, reproductive diagnostics, artificial insemination, routine health inspections, and farmer training. All of which are essential for raising performance per animal. Encouragingly, institutional reforms are also emerging as demonstrated by the BMC’s seven-day payment turnaround and the Direct Cattle Procurement Scheme in Ngamiland, restoring trust in markets that many farmers long abandoned.
These are meaningful steps, but they mark only the beginning of what a productivity-driven transformation requires. Botswana’s challenge is not merely the size of its herd but the efficiency of its production system. The real shift must move from counting cattle but also placing emphasis on higher performance like higher calving rates, lower mortality, faster weight gain, improved feed conversion, and better market standards. Without this pivot toward measurable output and value per animal, herd expansion risks becoming a costly, resource-intensive exercise with limited economic return.
Beyond expanding the herd, the real productivity challenge lies in managing Botswana’s rangelands. The SONA’s Rangeland Restoration Project in Tsabong is therefore more than an environmental effort; it is a critical productivity reform. Degraded pastures severely restrict cost-effective livestock production, as they limit calf survival and overall herd weight gain. This forces all farmers–even the well-resourced commercial operations to increase reliance on expensive supplementary feeding to maintain performance. Restoring grazing areas through better management and rehabilitation will fundamentally improve natural feed availability, reduce mortality rates, and strengthen the entire beef value chain by lowering the cost of production.
Crop and horticulture production.
If Botswana’s livestock defines its past, then crop and horticulture production could well define its agricultural future. The 2025 SONA reported a 34 percent increase in planted area and a surge in output to 144 000 tonnes, up from just under 40 000 tonnes the previous season. This is an encouraging sign that the country’s food systems are rebounding. Horticulture alone produced 88 670 tonnes, meeting 80 percent of national vegetable demand and nearly a third of fruit demand. This remarkable performance is partly linked to the import restriction on selected fruits and vegetables introduced in 2021, which stimulated domestic production and encouraged farmers to expand capacity.
While horticultural output remains impressive, the 88 775 tonnes produced in 2022/23, shortly after the introduction of the import ban, is slightly higher than the most recent figure of 88 670 tonnes, suggesting that growth has begun to level down. The next phase of progress must therefore come from productivity gains such as higher yields per hectare, improved irrigation efficiency, reduced post-harvest losses, and smarter use of inputs. Sustained growth in this sector will depend not on cultivating more land, but on cultivating more value from every hectare.
The country would also benefit from accelerating the adoption of climate-smart technologies such as micro-irrigation, protected farming, and water harvesting, alongside improving access to affordable finance for small and medium producers. Without these, horticulture risks stalling even with strong policy support behind it.
Industrial Hemp and Medicinal Cannabis
Among the most forward-looking announcements in the 2025 SONA was the Government’s decision to open Botswana’s agricultural frontier to industrial hemp and medicinal cannabis. It is acknowledged that the rapidly growing international demand for these products will offer farmers a lucrative alternative cash crop, creating new jobs in farming, processing, sales, and even research. The President framed this as a diversification milestone with a deliberate move to reposition agriculture as a high-value, innovation-driven sector. Supported by the recently passed Cannabis Act and the Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, the new framework provides the legal foundation for investment in cultivation, processing, and export.
To ensure a responsible and evidence-based rollout, Government has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Hemp Innovations, a global firm with technical expertise in hemp research and production. Trials are set to begin at BUAN in partnership with the National Agricultural Research and Development Institute (NARDI), before expanding to interested Batswana farmers. This phased approach, beginning with research, scaling through pilot production, and culminating in local farmer participation is both practical and productivity-minded. It ensures skills transfer, technology diffusion, and quality control before full commercialisation.
Success will depend on effective alignment of research institutions, investors, and farmers under a clear productivity and value-chain model that measures performance not only by hectares under cultivation, but by value generated per kilogram of processed product. Globally industrial hemp has applications in textiles, construction, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. Given this, Botswana could expand its non-traditional exports from this industry. It is worth noting that hemp and medicinal cannabis production could symbolise the new face of Botswana’s agriculture expansion.
Dairy Production
The 2025 SONA’s focus on revitalising dairy production marks one of the most pragmatic steps in Botswana’s agricultural transformation agenda. Currently, Botswana’s local milk production capacity stands at around 13 percent of national demand, but the goal is to increase this to over 60 percent by next year. President Boko’s announcement of the Milk Valley initiative which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Botswana Development Corporation signals a deliberate shift toward building a modern, commercially viable dairy industry.
Under this initiative, government has partnered with Brazilian suppliers to import 1 000 Girolando dairy cattle which is a high-yield breed renowned for its adaptability to tropical climates such as Botswana. The SONA further highlights an out-grower model around the Lobatse region, which will engage local contract farmers to produce feed for the new dairy cluster. Alongside the cattle imports and out-grower model, government is finalising technical cooperation agreements for skills transfer, breeding management, and modern dairy technology. This approach reflects a broader policy realignment: expanding production through training, value chain development and efficiency.
Botswana’s dairy transformation therefore represents a critical test of productivity-led industrialisation. Irrespective, sustainable growth in the dairy industry will require more than breeding programmes and feed production. Like in the case of hemp production, linking research institutions such as BUAN, NARDI and even BNPC with commercial entities like Milk Valley can develop a modern, data-informed dairy ecosystem, where farmers are not just producers of milk but participants in a value-added, performance-based industry.
Introducing industry performance benchmarks to farmers such as litres produced per cow per day, cost per litre of milk processed, and energy-use efficiency across dairy farms would allow government and farmers to monitor real productivity improvements. Investment in digital monitoring systems and established cooperative testing centres could further help track milk quality and herd performance in real time. If executed with discipline, this model could turn dairy from a chronic import dependency into a competitive domestic enterprise that exemplifies how productivity and innovation can deliver national self-sufficiency.
Embedding Climate-Smart and Sustainable Practices
While the 2025 SONA powerfully outlined Botswana’s ambitions for expanding agricultural sector, it made only passing reference to the urgent issue of climate resilience. This is considered a notable gap for a sector deeply shaped by weather extremes. One cannot meaningfully discuss agricultural transformation without confronting the climate challenge. Without embedding climate-smart and sustainable practices into every stage of the agricultural value chain, productivity gains will remain fragile and short-lived.
Botswana does have a National Climate Change Policy designed to mainstream sustainability into development planning. Yet the country continues to struggle with green productivity. According to the Environmental Performance Index, Botswana ranks 66/180 overall but a worrying 167/180 for the agriculture pillar. Unfortunately, this a clear indicator that production systems are not aligned with environmental stewardship.
Preliminary findings from a MLHA–BNPC–BIDPA agricultural productivity study reinforce this concern. The study further indicates that many climate-smart and eco-friendly technologies remain too costly, insufficiently understood, or poorly adopted by farmers and even extension officers. However, Botswana cannot raise agricultural productivity without first fixing foundational issues such as soil degradation, water inefficiency, climate vulnerability, and under-resourced farmer support systems.
To move forward, Botswana needs to make green technologies more accessible, tailor climate training to different agro-ecological zones, and most importantly rebuild extension services so that farmers receive practical, hands-on guidance. Productivity reforms must therefore go hand in hand with environmental reforms. In essence, Botswana’s next productivity frontier lies not in using more inputs, but in using them more sustainably and ensuring that the country’s drive for prosperity does not exhaust the very ecosystems on which agricultural growth depends.
Labour Productivity
One of the most striking omissions in the 2025 SONA is the absence of a clear conversation on labour productivity, despite the fact that this is arguably the single most important determinant of whether any of the sector’s ambitious targets will materialise. In the case of the agriculture sector, transformation will not occur merely because new programmes are rolled out or new technologies are procured. Even the finest cattle genetics, improved seed varieties, high-tech irrigation systems, or climate-smart innovations cannot compensate for low worker productivity.
This gap is particularly concerning given Botswana’s labour competitiveness profile. The 2025 IMD World Competitiveness Report ranks Botswana 67th out of 69 high- and middle-income countries on worker motivation, placing the country near the bottom of the global productivity curve. This means that without addressing human capital performance, and related issues such as employee engagement, work ethic, and labour relations, the sector risks pouring resources into systems that cannot deliver their intended outcomes.
Across Botswana, the human aspect of agricultural productivity are weak. The Research shows that employee absenteeism, livestock neglect, poor discipline, and substance abuse disrupt farm operations daily. However, many farm employees work under difficult conditions, with low wages, limited training, and almost no recognition. This creates a cycle where low motivation leads to low performance, which then reinforces low productivity. Traditional systems such as mafisa, letsema, and mephato which once encouraged teamwork, discipline, shared labour, mentorship, and community accountability have faded. Their disappearance has eroded some of the social cohesion and work ethic that supported agricultural productivity for generations.
Going forward, raising labour productivity requires a deliberate, people-centred strategy. This means revitalising extension services, improving working conditions, and embedding practical, hands-on training through BUAN, NARDI, and agricultural hubs. Rebuilding traditional systems, even in modernised forms, could play a powerful role in restoring commitment and ownership among farm workers. It also means rebranding agriculture as a respected and profitable career path, especially for women and young people who remain underrepresented in the sector. If Botswana is serious about raising agriculture’s share of GDP from 2% to 6%, then labour productivity must become central to the transformation effort.
Conclusion
As diamonds lose their dominance and fiscal buffers shrink, agriculture is no longer just another sector, it is Botswana’s next great test of economic resilience. The 2025 SONA lays out bold and necessary interventions, but their success will hinge whether Botswana can translate political ambition into real productivity on the ground.
True transformation will not come from importing new cattle breeds, rolling out new programmes, or expanding planted area in isolation. The real shift will come from producing more value from every cow, every hectare, every drop of water, every hour of labour, and every pula spent. Without this pivot, the sector will continue to grow but not in strength.
Botswana has never lacked great ideas, policies, or strategies. However, what the country must now deliver is execution, that is disciplined, coordinated, measurable and anchored in productivity at every stage of the value chain. If this is achieved, agriculture can genuinely rise from two (2) percent to six (6) percent of GDP as envisioned by the 2025 SONA and become a pillar of inclusive prosperity.
