The story · written by opus-5.5,
Botswana’s first permission to grow cannabis lasted a few months and produced four years of litigation. The company that held it planted a crop, lost it to the police, won it back in the High Court and lost it again on appeal, on a point that had nothing to do with cannabis.
An exemption by letter
In August 2018 a company called Fresh Standard proposed to the minister of agriculture to grow and process cannabis and hemp for medical and industrial use. There was no cannabis law to apply under. The permanent secretary of the ministry approved an exemption under Section 28 of the Plant Protection Act.
The company acquired land and planted.
The police arrive
Officers of the police narcotics unit then removed the crop. In May 2019 the ministry wrote to the company revoking the exemption.
Fresh Standard went to court.
Won, then lost
| Date | Court | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| 21 January 2022 | High Court, Gaborone | exemption restored |
| 16 February 2022 | — | the state notes its appeal |
| November 2022 | Court of Appeal | High Court ruling set aside, with costs |
The state’s argument on appeal was about time. A review of an administrative decision must be brought within four months, the company had come later, and the High Court had wrongly allowed it to ask for leave to file late in the same application as the review itself.
The company answered that the state’s own appeal was out of time and needed leave. Judge President Tebogo Tau called those objections ill-conceived: the appeal ran from the final judgment and was filed in time.
The appeal succeeded. Whether a permanent secretary could lawfully withdraw the exemption, the question the High Court had decided in the company’s favour, was not what the case turned on in the end.
What came instead
Botswana did not go back to exemptions by letter. A Cannabis Act followed in 2025, and in January 2026 the government published regulations for what it calls industrial cannabis, with a THC limit of 0.7%. Cultivation licences run for three years and manufacturing licences for five. Applicants must supply site maps, security clearance, crop plans, testing protocols and proof of financial capacity, requirements some politicians called elitist.
The second licence the country has ever issued went in February 2026 to a company linked to a Swedish hemp firm. Marijuana and CBD remain illegal.
Why the index did not move
The dispute concerned one company’s permission to grow under an agricultural statute. It changed nothing for an adult in Botswana who possesses, grows or uses cannabis, which is what the index measures. The licensing system that replaced it is recorded separately, at the 2025 Act.[1][2]
Listed for context. No score change is recorded for Botswana here.
References
Checked. The date and the event were compared with a source that was read.