Botswana minimum wage
Botswana has NO single national minimum wage. Under Part XVI of the Employment Act (Cap 47:01) the Minister responsible for labour fixes minimum wages SECTOR BY SECTOR, by Order published in the Gazette, on the advice of the tripartite Minimum Wages Advisory Board (ss 132-137). The current instrument is the Regulation of Minimum Wages Order, S.I. No. 7 of 2024. This series carries the general hourly rate that applies across the scheduled trades; agriculture and domestic service are fixed monthly instead — see notes.
What this value means
STRUCTURE (established positively, not assumed): the Employment Act Cap 47:01 empowers the Minister to fix, adjust or abolish minimum wages for named industries and trades — building, construction, exploration and quarrying; wholesale distributive trade; manufacturing; service and repair trades; hotel, catering and entertainment; garage, motor trade and road transport; retail distributive trade; watchmen employed in those trades; security guards employed by security companies; plus the agricultural sector and domestic service. There is therefore no national figure to quote, and any source presenting one as 'the Botswana minimum wage' is asserting something the statute does not create. WHAT S.I. No. 7 OF 2024 DID: announced 21 December 2023 and effective 1 FEBRUARY 2024, it raised the hourly rate for the scheduled trades by 23.5 percent to P9.06/hour, and raised the AGRICULTURAL and DOMESTIC SERVICE monthly rate by 38.4 percent to P1,500/month. Retail distributive trade, which had been on a lower hourly rate of P6.51, first received a once-off 12.75 percent catch-up to P7.34 so that it entered the general increase level with the other trades — which is why the scheduled trades now share a single P9.06 hourly figure rather than a spread. The Ministry's own arithmetic puts P9.06/hour at P2,120.04/month (i.e. a 234-hour month). PENDING CHANGE — DO NOT SERVE AS FACT: the UDC government has committed to a P4,000/month 'living wage'. Government, Business Botswana and the trade unions agreed in principle to living-wage legislation; on 11 August 2025 the Ministry said it had completed an ILO-commissioned review but was 'not in a position to commit to a clear plan', favouring incremental steps and requiring the Minimum Wages Advisory Board to be reconstituted first; on 17 November 2025 the Minister said the S.I. was under review to raise it to P4,000, with no effective date. Business Botswana has counter-proposed 5-10 percent annual increases. No replacement Order had been gazetted at confirmation, so P9.06/hour and P1,500/month remain in force. ACCESS NOTE: Botswana does not publish Statutory Instruments online — S.I. No. 7 of 2024 itself is not fetchable from any government site; the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs domain (mlha.gov.bw) does not resolve; www.gov.bw serves no minimum-wage page. The figures above are taken from the responsible Minister's statements as carried by the Government's own news service (dailynews.gov.bw). The Employment Act text is at https://www.botswanalmo.org.bw/system/files/Legislation_Employment_Act.pdf (Botswana Labour Market Observatory).
Earlier values
| From | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-01-01 | 7.34 | Botswana Daily News (BOPA), 'Government adjusts wage rates', |
Get it programmatically
curl https://afriref.dev/v1/bw/minimum-wage
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://afriref.dev/v1/bw/minimum-wage/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://afriref.dev/provenance/bw/minimum-wageOther Botswana series: policy interest rate · VAT rate · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate · income tax rates