New Botswana City: UAE’s ALBADDAD Breaks Ground on $1.9bn Gaborone Megaproject

UAE-headquartered ALBADDAD Holding has launched New Botswana City, a US$1.9 billion mixed-use development in the capital Gaborone, in partnership with the Botswana Development Corporation (BDC), the government’s principal investment arm. The launch and groundbreaking were officiated in early June by President Duma Gideon Boko, who framed the project as a test of whether “strategic land can be converted into national value.”

Spanning 1,240,000 square metres across three phases, the development is one of the most ambitious property bets ever staked in Botswana — and it lands at a moment when the country is under intense pressure to build an economy that no longer rises and falls with the price of diamonds.

What is being built

According to the developer’s launch materials, carried by Zawya and Construction Business News Middle East, the masterplan comprises 51 residential towers grouped into 17 integrated complexes (three towers per complex), 18 buildings across six commercial and office complexes, five international hotels, and a boulevard district of retail, dining and entertainment.

The anchor — and the first phase — is the ALBADDAD Botswana Global Exhibition & Convention Centre, a 124,000 m² venue valued at US$292 million that the developer says will rank among Africa’s largest. ALBADDAD will run the project across its full lifecycle, from masterplanning and construction through long-term operation, drawing on a track record that includes work tied to COP28 Dubai, GITEX Africa and the Riyadh Front Exhibition and Convention Center.

ALBADDAD projects the completed city will generate between 25,000 and 37,500 direct and indirect jobs at full operational capacity — a developer estimate, not a guaranteed outcome. No public completion timeline has been released for the residential and commercial phases that follow the convention centre.

Project snapshot

Why the timing matters

Botswana remains one of Africa’s most stable, well-governed economies, but its growth model is heavily exposed to a single commodity. Diamonds account for roughly 80% of exports and a large share of government revenue, according to the World Bank. A prolonged downturn — driven by softer luxury demand and competition from lab-grown stones — pushed the economy into contraction in both 2024 and 2025, and in March 2026 S&P Global Ratings cut Botswana’s sovereign rating to BBB-.

A modest recovery to around 3% growth is forecast for 2026, but the 2026–27 national budget still projects a deficit near 8.9% of GDP, and public debt is pressing against the government’s self-imposed 40%-of-GDP ceiling. In that context, a UAE-funded mixed-use city — and the foreign capital, construction activity and recurring events economy it promises — is exactly the kind of private-sector-led diversification the IMF and World Bank have urged. It also reflects a wider trend: Gulf developers steadily expanding their footprint across African urban-development markets.

The risks beneath the headline number

The US$1.9 billion figure is a projected value across a multi-phase, multi-year build — not committed or deployed capital. At launch, only Phase 1 (the convention centre) has broken ground; the residential and commercial phases that make up most of the headline value remain to be financed, scheduled and absorbed by the market. Single-developer megaprojects of this scale carry real execution and delivery risk, and the jobs and value projections originate with the developer.

There is also a public-finance dimension. The BDC is a state investment vehicle entering a major partnership at a time of fiscal strain, which raises legitimate questions about the structure of the deal, taxpayer exposure and the terms under which foreign capital participates — points President Boko himself flagged when he said the project must enter “under clear terms, with clear benefits and respect for national priorities.” Investors and buyers should treat the absence of a published delivery timeline as a gap to monitor, not a detail to assume away.

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