Botswana’s housing and land crisis has reached alarming levels, with nearly 440,000 citizens waiting for residential plots while government admits it cannot say when the backlog will be cleared, exposing the scale of one of the country’s longest-running service delivery failures.
A parliamentary response by Minister of Lands and Agriculture Edwin Dikoloti to a question from Bobirwa Member of Parliament Taolo Lucas reveals a land allocation system overwhelmed by demand and constrained by limited land, funding shortages and inadequate infrastructure.
The numbers tell the story.
Government records show 439,996 residential plot applications remain on waiting lists nationwide. Among them are 20,203 people who have waited for more than 30 years, 73,221 who have been waiting between 20 and 30 years, 94,458 who have spent between 10 and 20 years on the list, while the largest group, 225,333 applicants, has waited between five and 10 years. A further 71,781 have been waiting for less than five years.
Despite the enormous backlog, government was unable to provide Parliament with a timeline for allocations.
Although the ministry intends to allocate 47,000 plots by the end of the 2026/27 financial year, only 2,112 plots had been allocated during the first quarter, highlighting the gulf between demand and delivery.
Dikoloti said the biggest obstacle is the shortage of land for village expansion, forcing government to buy neighbouring farms. During the 2025/26 financial year, the ministry acquired 1,130.86 hectares for P32.6 million, while another 260.94 hectares have already been purchased this year at a cost of almost P15 million.
However, purchasing land has not translated into faster allocations. The minister cited delays in spatial planning, surveying and land servicing, adding that insufficient funding continues to hamper progress. He conceded that the ministry cannot provide timelines for those still waiting.
For more than 20,000 Batswana who have spent over three decades waiting for land, the figures point to a crisis that has outgrown bureaucracy and become a measure of government’s inability to meet one of citizens’ most basic expectations.