In mid August members of the Botswana Defence Force (BDF) and the US North Carolina National Guard (NCNG) conducted a week long exercise that brought US Space Force personnel into joint training with the BDF for the first time. The African nation launched its first satellite, BOTSAT-1, aboard a SpaceX rocket from Vandenberg SFB in California in March 2025.
Dubbed Exercise Southern Accord 2026, the event aimed at facilitating improved joint capabilities in enhancing regional security and fostering mutual readiness. The emphasis for this iteration of the biannual exercise shifted from field training to staff work – cyber operations, ISR and space operations as well as general staff planning. This took the troops from both nations into less familiar territory with respect to joint training. Under the US Department of War’s US State Partnership Program (SPP), the NCNG has been partnered with the BDF since 2008 in a relationship that extends into science and technology, education and civil agency coordination. Botswana also signed the Artemis Accords – a framework of principles for peaceful, transparent exploration of space, in June this year, the 68th nation so to do and the sixth in Africa.
Headline image shows BDF trainees receiving instruction on ISR techniques from NCNG soldiers in Gaborone, Botswana, in August. (Staff Sgt Reanna Hartgrove, NCNG)
