The government has finally offered its most detailed account yet of progress toward the ruling Umbrella for Democratic Change’s (UDC) flagship election promise: building 100,000 houses within its first five years in power. But a Minister’s response delivered Monday suggests the pledge is already running into funding delays, slow ground mobilisation, and reliance on private investors whose projects have yet to break ground.

Responding to a question from Molepolole North MP Arafat Khan, Minister of Water and Human Settlement Onneetse Ramogapi outlined a five-part strategy anchored on revamped social housing, Botswana Housing Corporation (BHC) developments, private-sector participation, and donations. The centrepiece of the new housing drive is the Bonno National Housing Programme, a rebranded and expanded version of earlier low-income schemes.

The centrepiece of the new housing drive is the Bonno National Housing Programme, a rebranded and expanded version of earlier low-income schemes.

In his response, Ramogapi said the Bonno Turnkey Development Housing Scheme, designed for low-income earners making between P4,400 and P95,000 annually, plans to construct 353 houses across all constituencies this financial year. But only 58 units are currently under construction, with completion expected by December 2025. The remaining 295 homes will start “during December 2025,” he said, attributing the delay to the late approval of funding in the final week of November.

A similar setback has affected a related programme for middle-income earners (the D4 scale and below scheme), where 61 houses were scheduled to begin this year but will now commence in December 2025 for the same reason.

The BHC’s commercial programme, expected to drive a significant share of the national target, has 924 units under construction and a staggering 11,494 at pre-construction stage, Ramogapi said. Of these, only seven are complete, while 550 have passed the halfway mark. In total, the BHC pipeline accounts for 12,418 housing units.

The largest numerical commitment lies with the private sector: 19,344 housing units have been allocated to 154 investors across 52 constituencies. But implementation is still “at contracting stage,” with no construction start date provided.

The government has also acquired 1,226 former BCL and Tati Nickel Mine housing units and received four donated houses from Morupule Coal Mine, Choppies and Obakeng Construction.

For Molepolole, Khan’s constituency and one of the country’s most populous villages, Ramogapi said 1,288 housing units have been allocated across the different schemes. The bulk, 1,200 homes, fall under the private-sector initiative, with 80 BHC commercial units and eight Bonno Turnkey units earmarked for the village.

Although the minister did not explicitly concede the 100,000-unit target is at risk, the timelines revealed suggest that major components of the housing rollout will not break ground until late 2025, two years into the UDC’s five-year time frame.