Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) has again failed to fully utilise the country’s annual Norway beef quota after recurring foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks disrupted cattle movements and slaughter operations, allowing neighbouring Namibia to secure additional export volumes in one of the region’s most lucrative beef markets.
Botswana and Namibia each have access to about 1,600 tonnes of duty-free beef exports to Norway under a preferential quota arrangement. Norway remains a premium market because imports outside the quota attract steep tariffs.
Namibia’s state-owned meat processor, Meatco, said it had secured additional quota volumes released by Botswana and had exported 45.2% of its Norway allocation by mid-April, compared with 29.2% at the same stage in 2024.
The Norway market contributes 18% of Meatco’s international revenue and helped drive the company’s return to profitability. In the 2024/25 financial year, Meatco earned N$1.514 billion (about P1.16 billion) from direct beef sales, with Norway accounting for roughly N$227 million (about P174 million) of revenue.
The latest shortfall extends Botswana’s struggle to consistently utilise the Norway quota since 2021, despite reforms aimed at reviving BMC. Government ended live cattle exports for slaughter in 2023 to increase supplies to domestic abattoirs after BMC struggled to secure enough cattle for export markets.
Bank of Botswana data show exports of meat and meat products recovered from P137.2 million in 2022 to P311.9 million in 2023, P403.6 million in 2024 and P441.5 million in 2025, but remain about 62% below the P1.15 billion recorded in 2016, before the prolonged decline in Botswana’s beef exports.