The debate on Batswana’s lips over whether President Duma Boko is taking Botswana in the right direction or the wrong one will, for the first time, be grounded in hard evidence when the Mo ibrahim Foundation releases the 2026 Inbrahim Index of African Governance.
On social media, homes and social gatherings across the country, opinions are shaped by perceptions, political loyalty and lived experience. The upcoming 2026 Ibrahim Index is expected to cut through the noise, offering a data driven assessment of Botswana is performing under President Boko’s leadership.
The Ibrahim Index measures governance broadly. Its methodology covers political participation, rights, rule of law, security, public administration, economic opportunity, human development and other dimensions of state performance.
The 2026 edition will draw on hundreds of variables from dozens of international data sources. Crucially, the index will be released on October 31st, the second anniversary of Boko’s presidency, giving it added political and symbolic weight as a mid-term benchmark of his administration’s early performance.
The forthcoming index should not be treated as a verdict on Boko’s presidency. Its data will only cove through the end of 2025, meaning that that the index captures only the early part of the Unvrella For Democratic Change (UDC) administration. It will take several more editions befoe a clear trend under Boko can be established. But the 2026 index will nevertheless be significant. It will provide the first independent, continent-wide statistical benchmark against which the new government’s governance record can be measured.
Anti-corruption performance wil be particularly important. The Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s preliminary findings for the forthcoming index show that corruption remains one of the continent’s major governance challenges, with African countries divided between those improving and those experiencing deterioration.
Although Botswana remains ranked sixth in Africa with an Anti-Corruption score of 57.8, the index classifies the country among only six African nations experiencing ‘Increasing Deterioration’-a category reserved for countries whose anti-corruption performance has not only declined but where the pace of decline has accelerated since 2021.
The report shows Botswana’s score has fallen by 8.6 points over the past decade, causing the country to drop three places in continental rankings.
Botswana is listed among the five countries recording the worst anti-corruption deterioration since 2016, alongside Comoros, Liberia, South Africa and Niger.
The Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s preliminary 2026 Anti-corruption assessment provides a decade-long measure of Botswana’s anti-corruption trajectory through 2025, including the first year of the Boko administration. The report is expected to reveal details on whether the the country’s anti-corruption deterioration continues under Boko’s presidency or is being reversed.
Another crucial measure will be whether President Boko’s recent sweeping changes in the leadership in Botswana’s civil service has made the state better or worse off.
Botswana’s public administration has traditionally been regarded as one of the country’s institutional strengths. The Ibrahim Index preliminary report has recorded a decline in the effectiveness of the state. The preliminary index however captured a decade-long trend and does not have specific findings for the period under the UDC government. Those figures are expected in the detailed final report.
The economic test will also be increasingly important because the new government has inherited a much less comfortable fiscal environment than previous administrations enjoyed. The global diamond market has experienced a prolonged downturn and for Boko, fiscal discipline could be a governance issue as much as an economic one.