Informal Work in Botswana Has Two Official Sizes
One measure counts unregistered businesses and finds 23%. The other counts jobs without protection and finds 34%. They answer different questions.
Informal sector: people in unregistered businesses
QMTS Q1 2024Informal employment: jobs without protection
QMTS Q1 2024Botswana measures informal work two ways, and the two numbers are eleven percentage points apart. Neither is a better version of the other. They are counting different things, and knowing which is which changes what you conclude about a career.
Measure one: where you work
Informal sector employment counts people working in informal establishments. Statistics Botswana defines those as businesses that are not registered, do not keep formal accounts, and employ fewer than five people. On that basis, 173,583 people, 23.0% of everyone employed, worked in the informal sector in the first quarter of 2024.
That work concentrates in a few places: retail trade at 54,796 people, described as mostly tuck-shop workers and street hawkers; construction at 26,762; agriculture at 23,686; manufacturing at 17,796. Information and communication is 0.1% of it.
Measure two: what your job gives you
Informal employment counts jobs that are not subject to labour legislation, income taxation or social protection, and that carry no entitlement to benefits such as notice of dismissal, severance or paid leave. By that definition the figure is 257,289 people, 34.1% of employment.
The surprise is where the largest share sits. Public administration accounts for 74,184 of those jobs, most of them Ipelegeng workers under local government. The state is the single biggest source of informal employment in Botswana.
Agriculture follows at 47,357 and domestic service at 34,952. By occupation, two thirds of it, 169,223 people, is elementary work.
Why the distinction matters to you specifically
Because the two measures imply different risks. Working in a registered company on an unprotected arrangement is informal employment but not informal sector work. Running your own unregistered business is the reverse. The first is a contractual problem; the second is a formalisation problem.
If you are being paid without a contract, without leave and without notice, you are in the 34% regardless of how large and respectable your employer is. That is exactly the situation the new labour law and its presumption of employment are aimed at, and it is worth reading contractor or employee against your own arrangement.
Two cautions on the numbers
They move seasonally. Informal sector employment was 214,504 in the third quarter of 2023 against 173,583 in the first quarter of 2024, and Statistics Botswana warns specifically against reading quarter-on-quarter changes as trends.
And the detailed picture is old. The last standalone informal sector survey in Botswana was carried out in 2007. Everything more recent comes from the labour module of a broader household survey, which is a thinner instrument for understanding what informal businesses actually do.
The headline employment numbers surrounding all of this come with their own complication, which is covered in Botswana’s two unemployment rates.
Frequently asked
How big is Botswana’s informal sector?
Statistics Botswana publishes two measures for the first quarter of 2024. Informal sector employment, counting unregistered businesses with fewer than five employees, was 173,583 people or 23.0%. Informal employment, counting jobs without labour protection or benefits, was 257,289 people or 34.1%.
What is the biggest source of informal employment in Botswana?
Public administration, at 74,184 people, mostly Ipelegeng workers under local government, followed by agriculture at 47,357 and domestic service at 34,952.