Botswana’s growing appetite for high-profile foreign partnerships may be leaving it vulnerable to speculative “global investors” with little more than websites and promises. A pattern of haste, hollow deals, and neglected due diligence is emerging — one that could cost the nation both credibility and progress.
Déjà Vu from the Digital Boardroom
Botswana has a curious knack for attracting “global investors” who turn out, on closer inspection, to be little more than global websites. The latest to court the national imagination is a Singapore-registered outfit called Thirty Five Global Links Group (TFGL) — part of a grand-sounding consortium promising to transform the country’s energy security and infrastructure base.
The problem? The company was only incorporated in April 2025. Its address — Orchard Road, Singapore — is shared with dozens of shell entities. Its website features more adjectives than audited projects. And yet, just months later, it is reportedly signing “strategic partnerships” with the Government of Botswana, rubbing shoulders with names like Mercuria and Ulsan Holdings, as if pedigree were contagious. It feels like déjà vu — or perhaps déjà-Zotus.
Echoes of Zotus Group
The pattern repeats. Remember Zotus Group, the UK-based urban development company that proposed to build a futuristic “Kalahari City” — a bold dream that promised to change Botswana’s development map forever? That saga, too, was heavy on renderings and rhetoric, and light on verified investment capital.
There were AI renderings, models, press statements, and even references to billion-dollar funding lines. But when analysts tried to trace the financials, they found no substantive filings, no audited accounts, and no evidence of tangible work on the ground anywhere in the world.
A Familiar Formula
Now, TFGL has arrived with the same formula: a new name, a global flair, a local handshake. It ticks all the boxes — “strategic partnership,” “foreign direct investment,” “energy resilience,” and the ever-reliable “memorandum of understanding.” One might forgive the public for asking: is this another case of Botswana outsourcing its due diligence to hope?
Institutional Psychology and the Quest for Quick Wins
How does this keep happening? The answer lies less in the companies themselves than in Botswana’s own institutional psychology. Once known for integrity and caution, the bureaucracy has developed a peculiar impatience — a hunger for quick wins, foreign logos, and instant transformation.
Each new administration inherits the same wish list: diversify, industrialise, electrify. But rather than build credible pipelines of vetted investors, ministries often leap at whoever offers the boldest PowerPoint deck. Procurement regulations, supposedly designed to protect the taxpayer, are treated as optional.
Different Rules, Same Flag
Presidential directives, “strategic exemptions,” and “confidential partnerships” have become the new normal. The irony is that local businesses — the ones who actually meet procurement standards — are routinely disqualified for minor technicalities, while foreign start-ups with no track record are ushered straight into the State House boardroom.
If a Motswana company incorporated in April tried to bid for a P500 million contract, it would not even get past the PPAR portal. Yet TFGL, incorporated in April, is treated as a global saviour.
The Allure of Foreign Legitimacy
Why this persistent infatuation with the foreign and the flashy? Because to announce a partnership with “an international consortium” sounds visionary. It signals to voters, and to the markets, that something big is happening — even if nothing ever materialises.
In political communications, the appearance of progress often outweighs the reality of delivery. The MOU is celebrated as a milestone. The photo-op substitutes for the feasibility study. Ministers rotate, files gather dust, and by the time the next deal is announced, the previous one has quietly vanished from memory.
Accountability Lost in Translation
There is also a convenient shield of plausible deniability: when projects collapse, officials can blame “unforeseen challenges,” “geopolitical conditions,” or “the partner’s inability to mobilise funds.” No one is ever held accountable for selecting partners who could not survive a basic company-register search.
The failure is not only one of procurement, but of pride. The prestigious projects that aspire to put Botswana on the map are more likely to condemn the nation as a playground for dubious companies.
The Price of Bending the Rules
Botswana’s Public Procurement Act and associated regulations were never meant to be optional reading. They require demonstrated financial capacity, past performance, beneficial ownership disclosure, and, crucially, public transparency. Yet high-profile deals with opaque foreign firms are repeatedly exempted from these standards under the vague justification of “strategic importance.” Strategic to whom, one wonders?
Every time the government sidesteps its own procurement laws, it sends a message that rule-bending is patriotic when convenient. It undermines local enterprise, weakens trust in public institutions, and emboldens speculative actors who know that all they need is a glossy website and a few letters of introduction to be taken seriously.
The Mirage Portfolio Expands
TFGL and Zotus are not isolated curiosities. They are part of a widening constellation of paper-prospectors now orbiting Botswana’s development imagination. Scan the SONA and one finds the same handful of names repeating: Lotus Resources, Tlou Energy, Botala Energy, ReconAfrica, KaHill, Green Hydrogen, and various “green” consortia that exist largely in PDFs and PowerPoint slides.
Foreign Direct Imagination
The arithmetic is sobering. Most trade below ten US cents a share. Their filings reveal tiny cash reserves, perpetual rights issues, and no production revenue. The pattern is identical: list cheaply in Perth or Toronto, obtain exploration licences, issue upbeat press releases, and wait for the political echo chamber to amplify the illusion of momentum.
They offer visibility to governments hungry for announcements and liquidity to promoters hungry for headlines. This is not foreign direct investment; it is foreign direct imagination.
Credibility for Sale
The danger is not that these firms are fraudulent — many are perfectly lawful — but that they function as vehicles for narrative inflation. They give the impression of diversification without delivering it.
When ministers conflate speculative licences with actual industry, Botswana risks swapping the substance of credibility for the optics of ambition. Every “strategic partnership” that collapses without explanation erodes public faith in the state’s competence. And faith, once lost, cannot be imported from Singapore.