An End to Free Plots?

As Botswana’s land waiting lists grow and the costs of sprawling development rise, the country faces difficult questions about whether a nation-building policy designed for an earlier era can remain sustainable in its present form. That history matters. Precisely because it matters, the conversation today requires sensitivity, balance and honesty rather than ideology or accusation.

The question is not whether the policy was right. It clearly was. The more difficult question is whether the conditions that shaped the policy still exist in the same form today.

Botswana in 2026 is no longer Botswana in 1966. The country is more urbanised, more motorised, more infrastructure-intensive, more fiscally constrained and more environmentally stressed. Population growth, rising expectations, climate change, infrastructure costs and changing settlement patterns are creating pressures that earlier generations never had to confront.

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One figure alone forces reflection: approximately 650,000 to 700,000 people are currently estimated to be on land waiting lists nationally. In a country of around 2.6 million people, that is extraordinary. In some areas, waiting lists exceed the resident population itself.

Waiting periods stretch back decades. At what point does a waiting list stop being a queue and start becoming evidence that demand and delivery are structurally out of balance? That is not criticism.

It is simply a question worth asking. Another difficult question concerns sustainability. The financial cost of servicing low-density residential plots is extremely high.

Roads, water pipelines, sewerage, electricity, drainage, schools, clinics and transport networks must all stretch across increasingly dispersed settlements. The further settlements spread outward, the more infrastructure is required per household. This creates a geometry problem as much as a planning problem.

Greater Gaborone’s population density remains extremely low by international urban standards. Sprawling settlement patterns increase infrastructure costs, transport distances, fuel use and long-term maintenance obligations. The issue is not whether citizens deserve land.

Of course they do. The issue is whether the current settlement model remains economically and environmentally sustainable at scale. Perhaps the real need is not immediate answers, but better national questions.

Should future allocations continue following the same low-density spatial model? Can Botswana continue servicing hundreds of thousands of plots affordably under tightening fiscal conditions? How should the country balance individual plot ownership with the rising need for efficient urban infrastructure and public transport?

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