Gaborone Opens Its Boardroom: Inside the Inaugural CEO Africa Roundtable

For one full day in the first week of this month, the Gaborone International Convention Centre became more than just a venue. It transformed into a proving ground for an idea that Botswana’s leadership has bet the next decade on: that a nation can reshape its own economy right before the eyes of the investors, financiers, and CEOs it needs to build thatfuture. The inaugural Botswana CEO Roundtable, held under the banner “Towards a $40 Billion Economy by 2036,” attracted a strong turnout of chief executives, board chairpersons, diplomats, development partners, and business leaders from across the region.

It was clear evidence that when the CEO Africa Roundtable launches a new chapter, the room fills up fast. For the organizers, this was a great problem to have. But the real story wasn’t the crowd.

It was the openness. Government didn’t show up with polished slogans or staged photo ops. Instead, it came armed with a roadmap, a frank admission that the old model has run its course, and a clear call to action for everyone in the room.

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Botswana now joins a network that already gathers CEOs and policymakers from Zimbabwe, Zambia, Nigeria, Malawi, Uganda, and beyond. Bringing this platform to Gaborone was itself a statement – one that the ministers who spoke this week both acknowledged and put to the test. The first voice to set the tone was Honourable Phenyo Butale, Minister of International Relations.

He welcomed delegates on behalf of the Botswana government and introduced the Guest of Honour. His words framed diplomacy not as a ceremonial task but as a tool for economic transformation. “Diplomacy today is no longer only about flags and protocol,” Minister Butale told the audience.

“It is about opening markets, de-risking investment, and standing behind our private sector as it competes regionally and globally. Every trade mission we undertake, every bilateral agreement we sign, every investor we host, is ultimately in service of the conversations happening here today.” He was equally straightforward about why a platform like the CEO Africa Roundtable matters for a government in transition. “We do not see CEO ART as a guest in our economy,” he said.

“We see it as a partner in building it.” He drew three clear connections between government action and the Roundtable’s agenda: regional trade corridors like the Kazungula Bridge arrangements with Zambia and renewed SADC agreements, which offer shorter, cheaper routes to market; utility-scale solar projects now breaking ground; and a culture of policy dialogue where, in his words, “capital goes where it is welcomed, protected, and put to productive use.” If Minister Butale opened the door, Honourable Tiroeaone Ntsima, Minister of Trade and Entrepreneurship, took delegates on a full tour. Speaking on behalf of His Excellency President Advocate Duma Boko, Minister Ntsima laid out Botswana’s diversification thesis, sector by sector. He began with a blunt diagnosis of the economy Botswana inherited.

“An economy anchored to one resource is not a sovereign economy,” he said. “It is a hostage economy.” For more than five decades, Botswana’s growth story had largely been a diamond story – one that lifted the country to upper middle-income status but left it vulnerable to the ups and downs of global demand. “President Boko’s government was not elected to manage decline gracefully,” Minister Ntsima said. “We were elected to change the structure of this economy.”

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