10 Nov 2026

President Advocate Duma Boko says Botswana is heading toward becoming a digitally enabled, export-led, and diversified high-income economy where every Motswana is employed, empowered, and fulfilled. 

Addressing the nation on Monday during the State-of-the-Nation Address (SONA) 2026, the President said the country would go through phases and stages in its tumultuous passage from where it was to where it ought to be.

 “We face challenges at every step of advance, but we stride forward,” he said. Furthermore, President Boko said his message to the nation came at a time of continued and prolonged global uncertainty. 

He highlighted that ongoing global conflicts, coupled with rising trade tensions, continued to weigh heavily on the world economy.  As a diamond-dependent economy and a net importer of goods, Boko said Botswana had taken an economic battering.  “Despite this, I say to you now, concerned citizens, we are down but we are not out,” he said.

Therefore, the President acknowledged the citizens’ frustration with high fuel prices, youth unemployment, shortages of medicines in hospitals and clinics, and old, dilapidated government infrastructure, among others. 

He, however, assured Batswana that the government was planting a new economy in the wake of the diamond-dependent economy. 

The new economy, he said, would be one where diamonds are no longer the sole claim to economic viability and stability; rather, diamonds become just one part of a multi-sectoral economic garden. As part of growing the economy, the President also talked about productive transformation, which he said requires power infrastructure with a particular emphasis on grid upgrades, transmission lines, logistics, digital systems, industrial facilities, and intellectual assets. 

He further highlighted that the country needed productive diversification, not as a total retreat from diamonds, but as a strategy to reduce the proportion of national risk concentrated in one sector. ENDS