But more remains to be done, and this may require the Government to take tough decisions in order to make Botswana genuinely business-friendly. The Global Competitiveness Report also contains a ranking of factors that businesses in each country perceive as most problematic. I have yet to see what this year’s Report has to say on this, but I do not expect any surprises.
There is also the question of attitudes, which I have deliberately left unexplored. What I know is that for the last four years at least, the most common concern among Botswana businesses was “poor work ethic in the national labour force”, closely followed, in some cases, by “an inadequately educated workforce”. So it is not hard to see where the main problems lie.