14 Aug 2025

The road to rebuilding fiscal discipline in Botswana is strongly rooted and paved on accountability.

Acting President, Mr Ndaba Gaolathe made this assertion at the official opening of the 13^th Botswana Institute of Chartered Accountants (BICA) International Conference at the Royal Aria conference centre on August 14

The two-day conference featured visionary leaders, industry experts and innovators shaping the future of finance and the business sectors.

Delivering a keynote address at the annual conference, Mr Gaolathe, who is also Minister of Finance, said Botswana could not build a resilient economy if it did not have accountants who operated with unshakable ethics.

“It is you who certify whether the money meant for schools and clinics reach its destination. It is you who reveal whether procurement was clean or corrupted. It is you who must blow the whistle when wrongdoing hides behind spreadsheets,” he said.

Mr Gaolathe said when accountants rose to the task nations prospered but when they faltered and books went unchecked and audits ignored cracks began to show.

“Corruption finds a home in silence. Public funds vanish in shadows, governance collapse under poor oversight. Accountants are not just number crunchers, they are vanguards of public finance, you are guardians of trust, the sentinels of transparency and protectors of public purse,” he added.

He urged delegates that Botswana’s path to fiscal discipline would not be walked in parliament alone but should be walked in every accounting office, every audit firm and every finance department.

He said Botswana was not an observer of the digital era but co-authors as government had heard the call and was reimagining digital infrastructure, retooling development planning, overhauling service delivery and that in that journey BICA was not a passenger but the compass.

“BICA set the standard, BICA defends the trust, BICA builds the talent and when the trust is broken it is hard to rebuild, so I challenge you, do not keep pace with the world, outpace it. Be bold in your learning.

Be fearless in your ethics. Embrace artificial intelligence but never abandon human intelligence, our conscience, our compassion our botho,” said Mr Gaolathe.

For her part, BICA president, Ms Onneile Maripe said the theme for this year’s conference: Powering Progress: Resilience in the Digital Era was a challenge and call to action.

“We live in a time where digital innovation is redefining business, governance and the profession of accountancy itself,” she said.

Ms Maripe said BICA was deeply committed to ensuring that accountants in Botswana were prepared to lead in the evolving digital landscape.

She said the conference offered a platform to enhance competencies, foster innovation and collaborate across sectors so that the accounting profession continued to power progress in the digital economy. ENDS