r/Botswana • u/sagemanga • 11h ago
Discussion Botswana is a young country running on an old system
Title: Botswana is a young country running on an old system. Nobody’s the villain, but the numbers don’t add up.
For a long time, the rule has been simple: the older you are, the higher your seat. When a young person gets hired into a real position, the first reaction is “they’re still inexperienced.” We’d rather have someone older who’s been around. That habit has outlived the reasons for it.
Look at who actually lives here. In the 2022 census, the median age was 26 and people aged 18 to 35 made up 30% of the population. Only 5.7% were 65 or older. Yet in a lot of offices and institutions, the people making final calls are still in their 60s, 70s and 80s. The decision-making layer doesn’t look like the country it decides for. statsbotsstatsbots
I’m not saying older people need to retire, and I’m not blaming them. The same system boxed them in. They waited decades for their turn, and every professional is chasing the same two things: a better position, then a good retirement. When your next step and your retirement terms depend on holding your seat, you hold it. That’s an incentive problem, not a character flaw. But the result is a blockage with nowhere for anyone to move up.
It also shows in how we design things for young people. A lot of youth programs reflect an older picture of success: farming tools, livestock, the traditional route. But young people are moving toward towns, cities and corporate life. About 67% of Botswana’s population now lives in urban areas, up from 64%. We also send people abroad on scholarships to study fields with no matching jobs back home, so they build careers in other countries. We end up training talent for someone else’s economy. statsbots
The job numbers show the strain. Youth unemployment (ages 15 to 35) rose from 25.1% in 2015/16 to 28.9% in 2024/25, and the youth labour force grew 8.3%, from 427,089 to 467,267. Young women were at 30.7% and young men at 27.2%. More young people are looking for work, and a bigger share can’t find it. statsbotsstatsbots
I don’t think the fix is pushing someone out of their seat so someone else can have it. That keeps us fighting over the same old jobs. The fix is creating new seats: roles that fit today’s economy, investors who build here, and a real place for the people studying abroad to come back to. If we treat opportunity as something we can create instead of something we ration, the skills this country already has would carry it a long way.
Where are you seeing this? Is it shifting where you work, or is it the same story?
Sources: Statistics Botswana, 2022 Population and Housing Census; Statistics Botswana, Botswana Multi-Topic Household Survey 2024/25 Labour Force brief.