Air Botswana Requests Government Debt-to-Equity Deal

Air Botswana is seeking to convert a BWP 250 million government loan into equity after admitting it has no means of repayment. With interest, the 2018 loan has ballooned to BWP 304 million and the airline has formally told the finance ministry it cannot pay it back, requesting an equity swap and awaiting a response. 

The word the new general manager used in Parliament was irresponsible. He was talking about his own airline's debt.

A Cash-Losing Machine by Its Own Admission

Newly appointed general manager Bao Mosinyi, three months into the role, told Botswana's Parliamentary Standing Committee on Statutory Bodies and State Enterprises that the airline had been "a cash-losing machine each of these years." The numbers back him up without any softening. Air Botswana's best revenue year on record was BWP 330 million at the end of 2024, and it still posted a net loss of BWP 204 million in the same period. An airline spending BWP 204 million more than it earn in its strongest revenue year is not a turnaround story. It is a structural problem. 

The Botswana government has injected more than BWP 900 million into Air Botswana since the 2019-20 financial year, funding that has covered everything from pandemic relief and salary payments to engine overhauls and fleet acquisitions. The loan seeking conversion is one piece of a far larger financial relationship between the state and an airline that has never found a way to operate without it. 

The Governance Problem Nobody Fixed

Mosinyi did not stop at the debt. He told Parliament that Air Botswana's core problem was governance, no board, no permanent executive management, longstanding vacancies, and delayed audits stretching back years. All six executive positions below general manager are currently filled in an acting capacity.

That last detail is the one that explains everything else. An airline running on acting executives with no board making strategic decisions is an airline where nobody is truly accountable for outcomes. Debt grows, losses compound, and the government keeps writing cheques because there is no functioning leadership structure capable of stopping the cycle.

The equity conversion, if approved, cleans up the balance sheet on paper. But it does not fix the governance problem that created the debt in the first place, and Mosinyi, to his credit, said exactly that out loud in front of Parliament.