Botswana published its inaugural industrial cannabis license fees this month, which are prohibitively expensive for local farmers and businesses. With cultivation license fees coming in at thousands of Pula per hectare, local farmers who aspire to grow hemp have effectively been locked out of the market.
Hemp Business Summit Co-founder and Inaugural Hemp Business Summit CEO Oratile Masala has accused the Botswana Government of being unrealistic, unfair and exclusionary in the prices it has set for industrial cannabis licenses. There are a range of license categories with different prices for Batswana citizens, joint ventures and foreigners.
Masala intends launching a formal challenge to have the fees set aside as the government had failed to provide a satisfactory explanation as to why the licence fees were set so high.
Masala was responding to the tiered licence fee structure the government gazetted on 12 January 2026, which grades cannabis licence fees according to activity and investor-type categories. The structure contains different price brackets for the entire value chain, from cultivation to manufacturing and exports and levies investors different fees, depending on whether they are citizens, are joint venture investors (that is non-citizens in partnership with citizens) or non-citizen/foreign investors.
He said that while welcoming the preferential treatment granted to Batswana citizens and the entry fee for locals could be seen as relatively affordable, the promulgation of the fees was not a welcome development.
“If you’re a citizen it’s relatively less expensive compared to if you’re in partnership with a non-citizen. But in my view, this is not a welcome development,” Masala told Cannabiz Africa, pointing out that the government appeared to be at pains to justify the prices.
“My enquiries with regards to the reason behind the pricing was met with the answer that they want to ensure that the planting of medicinal cannabis as well as hemp is secure, it doesn’t lead to any illicit activities. Obviously that does not make sense.”
“How does making a licence very expensive ensure there’s no illicit activity?” he asked, adding: “It sounds like an excuse.
“It’s just going to serve to exclude the majority of people from cultivating hemp. To be honest, it’s something with which personally I’m not pleased with. People I have engaged with who want to go into hemp farming are not pleased as well.”
It was obvious that only those with the most capital will be cultivating cannabis while the majority of the people are left out, Masala lamented.
He was now looking to partner a local SMMEs advocacy body to raise the matter with the Ministry of Lands and Agriculture. “We’ll be trying to go out and challenge the way it’s been done.”
Opposition politicians in the early stages of draft regulations raised the same concerns as Masala. They derailed the passage of the first Cannabis Bill drafts after complaining the regulations would favour established stakeholders. As it happens, they have been vindicated and as one observer commented regarding the licence fees, the catchwords are ‘compliance, capital and institutional capacity’.
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