Botswana bets Billions on an energy overhaul

When President Duma Boko stood before a crowd in the dusty town of Maun this April and broke ground on a 500-megawatt solar plant, the second-largest such project in Africa, he was making more than a policy announcement. He was issuing what he called “a clear statement” that Botswana, a landlocked nation of 2.4 million people long shackled to costly electricity imports, intends to become a regional energy hub.

“This is not merely a project,” Boko declared at the ceremony, a savanna wind tugging at the ceremonial tent. “Botswana is poised to become a regional hub for solar energy generation.”

The scale of the ambition is staggering for a country where coal still generates 97 percent of the electricity and the World Bank has described the power supply as “increasingly unreliable.” Boko’s government is simultaneously refurbishing aging coal plants, building one of the continent’s largest solar-plus-battery-storage facilities, constructing hundreds of miles of high-voltage transmission lines to neighboring states, and erecting strategic fuel depots across the country; a portfolio of projects that, taken together, will require billions of pula and could reshape Botswana’s economic future.

Whether it all works is an open question; and one that carries enormous stakes for a nation still bearing the scars of the diamond market’s volatility and decades of energy dependence.

The Morupule Problem: Fixing what was already broken

Before Botswana can dream of exporting power, it must first stop importing it. The country’s current peak electricity demand stands at roughly 700 megawatts. Only 65 to 70 percent of that is met through local generation. The rest – about 30 percent – flows in from South Africa and Mozambique, at a cost that Boko has said drains roughly 3 billion pula from the economy each year.

The anchor of domestic generation is the Morupule coal complex near Palapye, and it is a troubled one. Morupule B, a 600-megawatt plant completed little more than a decade ago with financing from the African Development Bank, has been plagued by technical failures since essentially the day it opened. Units have shut down without warning. Output has limped along well below capacity. The Botswana Power Corporation has spent years on remedial works with, as one government assessment put it, “no clear end in sight.”

Morupule A, the older 132-megawatt station built in the 1980s, was shut down entirely in 2013 and only partially revived after a refurbishment in 2016. By late 2025, Boko acknowledged it had a remaining lifespan of roughly two years.

In November 2025, Boko’s government signed a strategic partnership with a consortium of international investors, Thirty-Five Global Links, Mercuria Asia Holdings, Ulsan Holdings, and Innovation Global Industries, that aims to solve the Morupule problem once and for all. Under the deal, Morupule A will be revitalized and its operational life extended by 10 to 15 years through deployment of new technology. Morupule B will undergo a comprehensive refurbishment designed to push it above 95 percent efficiency, delivering roughly 600 megawatts of reliable capacity.

“The deployment of world-class technology will promote skills transfer and strengthen Botswana’s capacity to generate its own power,” Boko said after the signing. He projected that once both plants are running properly, Botswana would not only eliminate its import dependency but could generate up to 750 megawatts for export.

The partnership is valued at more than 40 billion pula. It is, by any measure, the single largest energy investment in Botswana’s history.

The Maun solar gamble

If Morupule represents the past catching up with itself, the Maun solar project is the future arriving ahead of schedule.

The 500-megawatt Maun Solar Photovoltaic Plant, coupled with a 500-megawatt-hour Battery Energy Storage System, broke ground on April 16, 2026, in a government-to-government partnership with the Sultanate of Oman. The developer is Naqaa Sustainable Energy, a subsidiary of O-Green, an Omani state-owned renewable energy company. Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) will execute the project, and a subsidiary called Okavango Solar will operate it under a 30-year power purchase agreement. Commercial operations are slated for 2029.

The battery storage component is critical. Botswana enjoys more than 3,200 hours of sunshine annually; among the highest solar irradiation levels on the planet; but sunshine alone does not keep the lights on after dark. The 500-megawatt-hour BESS will store daytime solar generation for deployment during peak evening and early-morning demand, a capability that could significantly stabilize a grid that has been anything but stable.

“The project will significantly enhance security of supply and will reduce our carbon footprint as a country, optimise the corporation’s generation costs through displacement of expensive power imports, and will ultimately position Botswana as a net exporter of electricity in the region,” said David Kgoboko, the chief executive of Botswana Power Corporation.

The Maun project is not happening in isolation. Two 100-megawatt utility-scale solar installations in Mmadinare and Jwaneng are already advancing – Mmadinare is operational, and Jwaneng is nearing full commissioning. An additional 900 megawatts of solar PV is in development across Maun, Letlhakane, and Isang. The government’s revised Integrated Resource Plan targets 50 percent renewable energy in the national generation mix by 2030, up from roughly 8 percent today.

That is an almost sixfold increase in four years; a timeline that would be aggressive for any country, let alone one starting from a near-standing start in renewables.

The grid that connects it all

Generating power is one thing. Getting it to where it needs to go, and to the customers willing to pay for it, is another. Botswana’s existing transmission infrastructure is inadequate for the volumes of electricity the government intends to produce. The North West Transmission Grid Phase 2 Project is already underway to improve power delivery to the northwestern part of the country, where the Maun solar plant will be located.

But the larger play is international. In March 2026, the Multilateral Cooperation Center for Development Finance approved three grants; totaling roughly $3.5 million; to fund feasibility studies for high-voltage interconnector projects linking Botswana to Zambia, South Africa, and Namibia.

A 400-kilovolt interconnector between Botswana and Zambia would enable renewable energy power exchange between the two countries. A second 400-kV line would run from Isang, near Gaborone, to Mahikeng in northwest South Africa, carrying solar- and wind-generated electricity across the border. A third project – still in the pre-feasibility stage – would link Botswana and Namibia, with engineers weighing whether a 400-kV or a 765-kV line would best serve the corridor.

All three projects align with the Southern African Development Community’s framework for regional grid integration and fall under the umbrella of the Southern African Power Pool, which coordinates electricity trading among a dozen southern African nations.

The vision is straightforward: Botswana produces surplus clean energy and sells it across the region, earning export revenue while helping neighbors cope with drought-induced hydropower disruptions. Botswana has also applied to the I-Track Foundation to become an authorized issuer of International Renewable Energy Certificates, which would create a new revenue stream from corporate buyers seeking to meet carbon neutrality goals.

Boko put it bluntly in his November 2025 State of the Nation Address: Botswana intends to be a net exporter of electricity, targeting over 8,000 megawatts of generation capacity for export across Africa.

Fuel Security: The strategic reserves

Electricity is only half the energy equation. Botswana also imports virtually all of its petroleum products, and the country’s strategic fuel reserves have long been dangerously thin – roughly 15 days of national cover, a vulnerability that becomes acute whenever supply chains are disrupted.

Botswana Oil Limited, the state-owned petroleum company, is racing to change that. The goal is 90 days of national fuel cover, and the construction sites are scattered across the country.

In Francistown, the expansion of the existing petroleum depot from 38 million litres to 98 million litres was 88 percent complete as of November 2025, with commissioning expected in April 2026. The additional 60 million litres of capacity will significantly bolster the northern supply corridor.

In Ghanzi, a new depot with a capacity of 20 million litres; a project valued at roughly 1 billion pula; was 55 percent complete as of late 2025, with commissioning targeted for August 2026. The facility is designed to add 18 days of import cover to Botswana’s strategic storage capacity.

At Tshele Hills, a planned 171-million-litre strategic storage facility is advancing, with road construction to the depot site already complete and tendering for the main facility underway.

And then there is the coastal dimension. Botswana, landlocked since independence in 1966, has no port of its own. The government has long relied on transit corridors through South Africa and Namibia. Now Botswana Oil Limited is advancing plans for a 100-million-litre petroleum storage facility at Walvis Bay in Namibia, developed in partnership with OQ Trading, an Omani energy company. The facility would give Botswana direct access to seaborne fuel shipments, reducing transit times and costs.

A separate, even more ambitious proposal envisions a refinery near Walvis Bay and Ghanzi, capable of processing 60,000 to 100,000 barrels per day, producing petrol, diesel, kerosene, and jet fuel; a project that, if realized, would fundamentally alter the fuel supply architecture of southern Africa.

The price tag and the questions

None of this comes cheap.

The international investor partnership alone is valued at up to 74 billion pula. The Maun solar project’s 30-year power purchase agreement will commit Botswana Power Corporation to long-term offtake obligations. The transmission interconnectors, once past the feasibility stage, will require hundreds of millions of dollars in engineering and construction. The fuel storage portfolio adds billions more.

In August 2025, Boko announced a separate $12 billion investment deal with Al Mansour Holdings, though the structure and availability of those funds have been the subject of scrutiny in Parliament.

And there is the persistent question of whether Botswana Power Corporation; which has required more than 1 billion pula in annual government subsidies to keep electricity affordable; can manage this sweeping transformation without either breaking the national budget or pushing tariffs to politically untenable levels.

Boko has framed the subsidy elimination as a feature, not a bug. When the new generation capacity comes online and import costs fall, he has argued, BPC will be able to sell electricity profitably at reasonable rates, making government subsidies unnecessary.

“Removal of the subsidy is not throwing the nation under the bus,” he told reporters in November 2025. “When we reduce the cost of power to such an extent that BPC can still sell it profitably within reasonable bounds, it will make it unnecessary therefore for government to provide any subsidy.”

Critics note that similar promises have been made before – particularly around Morupule B, which was supposed to end Botswana’s import dependency a decade ago and instead became a cautionary tale in how not to commission a coal plant.

A Presidency defined by energy

Duma Boko came to office in October 2024 after a stunning electoral upset that ended nearly six decades of rule by the Botswana Democratic Party. A human rights lawyer by training, Boko campaigned on a platform of economic transformation and government accountability. Within a year, energy infrastructure had moved to the center of his agenda.

In February 2025, he opened the inaugural SADC Sustainable Energy Conference in Gaborone. In November, he delivered the State of the Nation Address in which he laid out the full scope of the energy portfolio. In April 2026, he traveled to Maun to personally officiate the solar groundbreaking.

The political logic is clear enough: reliable electricity is foundational to every other economic promise Boko has made, from job creation to industrial diversification. Without it, the 500,000 jobs his coalition pledged to create remain an abstraction. With it, Botswana has a shot at something it has never had ; genuine energy sovereignty and the export revenues that come with it.

“It will happen in three years,” Boko said recently of the broader transformation, addressing skeptics directly. “Many think it’s talk. We shall see.”

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