Botswana: The hunt for embezzled public funds, President Duma Boko’s commitment to impeccable governance

Since coming to power in November 2024, President Duma Boko has made the hunt for embezzled public funds one of the most emblematic battles of his presidency. Convinced that citizens’ trust in institutions cannot be rebuilt without real transparency, the Head of State has undertaken a vast forensic audit, valued at $4.5 million, of 30 public entities: ministries, state-owned enterprises and control bodies that have historically been little exposed to this type of verification.

Completed in March 2026, this audit uncovered practices of corruption, fraud and misappropriation of public resources, the findings of which were forwarded to the competent authorities for possible legal action.

For Moses Pelaelo, president of the steering committee in charge of overseeing the process, the aim of this approach is not to point to culprits a priori, but rather to “restore public trust” and “guarantee good governance”, in a country where control mechanisms had remained, for decades, largely ineffective in the face of abuses.

This offensive is accompanied by a major legislative project: the revision of the 2013 law on corruption and economic crimes, intended to strengthen the legal means of recovering misappropriated assets and to tighten the applicable sanctions.

This is a way for the Boko administration to transform the conclusions of the audit into concrete actions rather than simple findings with no follow-up.

This is part of a broader overhaul of Botswana’s state apparatus, where the issue of public integrity has become a common thread in government action, whether in the management of mineral resources, public procurement or the health sector, which has also been affected by revelations of corruption in the procurement of medicines.

By attacking head-on practices that have long been tolerated, Duma Boko is betting that the restoration of public trust necessarily involves the manifestation of the truth, however uncomfortable it may be for some of the cogs of the old system.

A gamble whose concrete results, particularly in terms of the effective recovery of stolen assets and successful legal proceedings, will now be closely scrutinized by Botswanan citizens as well as by the country’s international partners.