8 September 2026
Gaborone — Critics said it was impossible to build a modern school in a matter of weeks, but President Advocate Duma Boko proved them wrong with the unveiling of the Duma Boko School at Block 7 in Gaborone on Saturday.
Pushing back against bureaucratic resistance and doubts over viability, the flagship project, built by Jindal Power for government, serves as the inaugural site for African Hero, a pan-African initiative designed to rapidly expand access to education, healthcare and skills development.
“Many people pushed back against this project. We have had to fight along the way to assert the viability of this concept,” President Boko stated at the launch, calling out internal resistance from public servants that even delayed features like a planned swimming pool.
“So, you can see that even when the resources do not come from government, but from people of goodwill who are able and ready to assist, there is resistance from government itself,” President Boko said.
The President used the occasion to challenge traditional benchmarks for public education in a country where many state schools face dilapidated buildings, leaking roofs and severe over-crowding amid financial shortfall driven by the diamond market slump.
“When we say something is a school in Botswana, what features and attributes should it have to qualify as a school?
Is it just a building, in whatever state of repair or disrepair, with a small chalkboard, broken pieces of chalk and some teacher and learners? Or must we, as a country, begin to set minimum standards for a school in this country?” President Boko asked.
“Is this a public or private school? It cannot be a private school because it is better than all the private schools we have seen in this country.
It is also better than all the public schools, which means it is a public school,” he added.
Constructed as a prototype for modern African education, the single-storey, white-and-blue complex houses 380 pupils across pre-school and primary levels, with plans to add a junior school.
The state-of-the-art facility features bright and air-conditioned classrooms with interactive smart screens, clustered desks, covered walkways, a playground, an adjacent model clinic and pre-packaged learning kits for every pupil.
The Gaborone facility is the first of 100 schools and 50 clinics planned for the country, with hundreds more envisioned across Sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 98 million children and young people are currently out of school.
Following the flagship’s completion, Naveen Jindal of Jindal Power, which is developing the 700MW Mmamabula coal project, committed to building an identical facility in Mookane. To overcome government funding constraints and procurement delays, African Hero relies on a non-traditional philanthropic model.
African Hero founder and South African businessman, Zunaid Moti explained that the Foundation constructed projects upfront, absorbing initial costs and allowing donors or governments to pay flexibly only after delivery.
The initiative is backed by AfriForge, an 86 500-square-metre manufacturing mega-complex in Gabane that provides centralised panel, steel and aluminium fabrication, allowing for fast turnaround times and a 20-year maintenance warranty.
With its first project complete, the initiative is expanding rapidly across borders.
Malawi, represented at the unveiling by Vice President Enock Chihana, has already expressed interest in commissioning over 450 schools under the African Hero model.
Source: https://shorturl.at/xfOjq
Read the original article on Botswana Daily News.
By Bonang Masolotate
