HIS HONOUR, NDABA GAOLATHE
Vice President, The Republic of Botswana & Minister of Finance
Ndaba Nkosinathi Gaolathe is the Vice President and Minister of Finance of the Republic
of Botswana. He is also the Member of Parliament for Gaborone Bonnington-South. He
is the Vice President of the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) and President of the
Alliance for Progressives, one of the member parties of the UDC.
Gaolathe is a high impact world class leader, recognised for his creatively analytic and
diplomatic attributes. He possesses the leadership skills and capacity to lead any
corporation, government department or political entity. He has operated internationally
and succeeded in creating long term coalitions with a diverse range of organisational
formations across many countries. He continually demonstrates a capacity to operate at
all levels and has worked amicably with a wide range of institutions across a wide
spectrum of sectors and disciplines including in restructuring, macro/monetary
economics, portfolio management, financial structuring, scenario modelling,
company/institutional restructuring, management strategy, executive management and
political leadership.
Prior to his involvement in politics, Gaolathe was a community activist. He founded a
volunteer initiative more than twenty years ago in which he assisted struggling young
people succeed at Cambridge O-level examinations especially in Mathematics. He also
empowered them across many other subjects such English, General knowledge, survival
skills and entrepreneurship. Gaolathe has hosted a class of more than 40 students
every year since 1991 from when he was a university student, until 2014. He was active
in several other community and church organizations in and outside Botswana.
As an economist, his involvement in politics was through his speech-writing assignment
for Botswana’s former President Mr Festus Mogae, who he occasionally advised, on
economic and other matters of national interest. Ndaba Gaolathe also served as
Chairman of the Gomolemo Motswaledi campaign (Gomolemo Motswaledi was a
political visionary who founded the political organization that now forms part of the
current government).
Gaolathe brings wide experience in economics, strategy, governance, finance, modeling
and general leadership. He has worked for an economic think tank, governments,
investment bank regionally and internationally at all levels.