Blitz Bureau
GABORONE: Lesego Chombo’s enthusiasm for life is as infectious as her achievements are impressive: she has won the Miss Botswana 2022 and Miss World Africa 2024 crowns, is a working lawyer, has set up her own charitable foundation – and made history in November, becoming Botswana’s youngest Cabinet Minister.
She was just 26 years old at the time – and had clearly impressed Botswana’s incoming President Duma Boko, whose Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) had just won a landslide, ousting the party that had governed for 58 years. It was a seismic shift in the politics of the diamond-rich southern African nation – and Boko, a 55-yearold Harvard-trained lawyer, hit the ground running.
His main focus, he said, was fixing an economy too reliant on diamonds, telling the BBC ahead of his inauguration that he wanted young people to be the solution. Key to this was finding a suitable ambassador, and Chombo was clearly it: a young woman already committed to various causes. He made her minister of youth and gender.
“I’ve never been more proud to be young,” she told the BBC at the ministry’s headquarters in the capital, Gaborone. “I’m a young person living in Botswana, passionate about youth development, gender equality, but also so passionate about the development of children.” The beauty queen did not campaign to be an MP – she is what is called a specially elected member of parliament – and is now one of just six female MPs in the 69-member National Assembly.
Chombo said becoming an MP and then minister came as a complete surprise to her. “I got appointed by a president who had never met me,” she said.
