26 May 2026

The Botswana Development Corporation (BDC) maintains a strict policy against investing in politically exposed persons (PEPs) to protect its capital and satisfy strict international funding requirements. 

Appearing before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Statutory Bodies and State Enterprises on Monday, BDC managing director, Mr Oteng Keabetswe emphasised that the restriction was core to the corporation’s operational policy. 

“Our international financiers require us to conduct thorough due diligence on any business. If we discover that a business is politically exposed, we do not finance it,” Mr Keabetswe said. 

However, he explained that prominent and influential individuals were not automatically disqualified from receiving funding. Instead, he said they faced a much higher threshold of scrutiny. 

“Our policy requires that we perform enhanced due diligence on these individuals to ensure that the corporation’s funds are not exposed to abuse,” he explained, noting that such safeguards were rigorously overseen by the BDC board of directors. 

On BDC’s mandate to stimulate the national economy, Mr Keabetswe noted that while their investments cut across Botswana, projects were currently concentrated around major cities and towns, driven by two main factors including the required proximity to markets as well as the corporation’s minimum investment ticket size of P50 million and above. 

However, he added that the corporation was looking to expand its footprint deeper into rural and secondary markets. 

BDC, he said was currently evaluating and managing a pipeline of diverse projects across several districts, looking at automotive, agriculture, manufacturing and construction materials in Lobatse, while advancing pipeline developments in Palapye, Francistown, Ghanzi, Tsabong and the wider Kgalagadi areas. 

“If there are projects in the wider geographical spread of the country that meet our investment criteria, we consider them,” Mr Keabetswe said, emphasising that all projects were assessed equally based on commercial viability. 

To further drive nationwide development, he indicated that BDC had approached several local authorities to explore economic partnerships. 

He further noted that the corporation was also receptive to partnering directly with local communities, particularly those who can contribute land parcels as equity into new ventures. 

He said a major focus of such a strategy was taking shape in Kasane, where BDC aimed to shift the paradigm of the tourism sector. 

Again, he said while the industry had continued to rely on a ‘low-volume, high-return’ model, BDC planned to pioneer a ‘high-volume, high-return’ alternative. 

On one hand, he indicated that a major initiative was on the pipeline which would be financed through BDC’s internal reserves and global development partners. 

“We will be unveiling a new project of that sort in the next two weeks, which we believe will change the face and persona of our tourism industry,” he said. 

He also told the committee that when assessing applications, BDC was entirely blind to who brought the project forward, focusing strictly on the objective commercial opportunity presented. 

That, he said was because BDC raised its capital independently from local and international capital markets, hence it must strictly balance project returns against its financial obligations to its funders. 

Furthermore, he said BDC would, over the next 12 to 24 months, plan to further diversify its revenue streams to ensure that it remained completely self-financing and avoided placing any financial pressure on government. 

Ultimately, the managing director said, the true measure of the corporation’s success would be its tangible impact on local communities. 

Over the coming years, he said BDC would prioritise tracking metrics centered on new jobs created, existing jobs defended, new industries built and the growth of export revenues to accelerate economic diversification. ENDS