Kutlo Motseta
16th October 2026
Orange Botswana held its ‘Orange Social Venture Prize 2026’ awards at the Orange Headquarters in the CBD, Gaborone. The competition is run by the Orange Botswana Foundation.
The keynote speaker was the Minister of Youth and Gender Lesego Chombo who spoke about the marginalized youth and women; and challenged the youth to take up available business funding opportunities and solve societies problems.
“If we need to create special funds whilst there are billions of funds available to position young people … [it] means that they been excluded from society,” she said.
She spoke about the need to assist the youth and women with their businesses.
“Financing is an issue but not the main issue, we realized that the right thing to do is to create the right ecosystem with mentoring before and after financing,” she added
She said there plenty of initiatives available and encouraged the youth to look into them in order to pursue their business and career interests.
“’The Botswana youth national program’ is a pilot program which will be rolling out mentorship with ‘Business Botswana’ …. [in terms of which] if a young person wants to be a member of parliament, they can mentored by a member of parliament, if they want to be the president they can be mentored by the president … [and so on]”
She said the private sector and government will be releasing a program to train women in business in the next financial year. The stake holders for the program include Orange Botswana, Standard Bank and De Beers.
She further discussed the tension that exists between the need to survive through providing entrepreneurial solutions that solve societal problems with temporary maintenance solutions and ones that eradicate them. She encouraged the youth to create solutions that eradicate problems and not merely manage them with solutions that permanently need them to provide a service, as is the case with HIV and ARV’s.
“If you are actually building a solution …. are you building a business that need the problem to continue? …. I hope that we will have young people that will completely solve problems … this is the tension that’s worth thinking about,” she added.
Ms. Goitseone Seven, the Project Lead for the Orange Social Venture Prize, said Orange received 119 application which were whittled down to the ten finalists.
“Entrepreneurs are given a platform to take Botswana’s solutions to the world.” She said.
She explained that Orange took the ideas with the strongest potential, which were then examined by 28 evaluators, “who took time to navigate the competitive field”.
“Our finalists had five minutes to communicate and defend their ideas … the pitch was followed by business assessments.” She added.
“Last year our finalist went to represent Botswana on the world stage and won the jury award at the international level.” She said.
Orange Acting Chief Executive Officer(CEO) Gobe Mbayi said that Orange aims to create bridge for entrepreneurs in Botswana society where its people are given opportunities to innovate, access local and international markets.
“Our entrepreneurs need skills and opportunity to test their solutions and take them to their immediate environments,” he said.
Modisa Maphanyane of Mobi Rides (car rentals) won the P50 000 prize see company websites on (www.mobirides.com) and on facebook: ‘Mobirides’. In second place was Phenyo Tsheko of WasteWorx which took home P30 000. In third place was Ms. Kago Dintwe, KraalSense (Agriculture, Fishing and Forestry) who took home third place which won P20 000. See company websites on https://kraalsense.com and on facebook: ‘KraalSense’.
The names of the ten finalists and their respective companies follow:
- Mr. Modisa Maphanyane, Mobi Rides (transport and logistics)
- Mr. Mthabisi Bokete, Uhuru Ai (Artificial Intelligence and Big Data)
- Ms. Peo Motswagole, Bolema Agritech (Agriculture, Fishing and Forestry)
- Mr. Phineous Sebopelo, Kitsiso (Agriculture, Fishing and Forestry)
- Phenyo Tsheko, founder of CEO of WasteWorx (Environment)
- Mr. Kgosietsile Nalebomo, Confidence Lab Bw (Education)
- Mr Brian Sibanda, Pulastock (Agriculture, Fishing and Forestry)
- Mr. Mpho Selebogo, PAYGO Gas Botswana (Energy)
- Kago Dintwe, KraalSense (Agriculture, Fishing and Forestry)
- Ms. Keletso Tselayakgosi, AirtimeSure LifeCover (Fintech and Insurtech)
Pictured are the three company representatives/execs with Hon. Min. Ms. Chombo (yellow), Director of Youth at the Ministry of Youth and Gender, Mr. Kristian Mmusi (in a blue tie). Maphayanne on the far left (purple/white shirt), Tsheko (WasteWorx shirt), Ms. Dintwe (white shirt) Orange executive on far right.
