Property – Infrastructure & Megaprojects · Editorial

By Moakanyi Magazine · June 2026

In parts of rural Botswana, the school run is still a donkey cart on a gravel verge. In March 2023, local authorities were instructed to find safer alternatives to the carts used to ferry learners, a directive that reads simple on paper and hard in the budget. The cart persists not by preference but by default: it moves children where no scheduled service runs and no tarred road reaches.

The tension is the familiar one for any council outside the main centres. A real safety exposure sits on one side, constrained transport spending on the other. A safer alternative means contracted vehicles, fuel, maintenance and drivers, recurring costs that land on authorities already stretched thin. Removing the cart without a funded replacement does not solve the problem so much as relocate it, from the road to the register, as a learner who simply stops arriving.

The Trade-Off: Safety Against the Ledger

The directive sets a standard but leaves the financing question where it usually sits, with the authority closest to the learner and furthest from the Pula. For operators who tender into public transport or vehicle supply, that gap is also the opening: a workable answer is one priced for a council budget, not a city contract, and built for distance, dust and low daily volumes rather than urban routes.

A safety standard is only as real as the budget line behind it.

The instruction is sound and overdue. Whether learners actually trade the cart for something safer will turn less on the policy than on whether the transport money follows it down to the council that has to deliver, and whether the replacement is designed for the rural reality the cart was answering in the first place.

Sources: allAfrica