Botswana does not have any regulation on trade secrets. The area is usually left to common law, usually invoked in the courts. The common way in which trade secrets are protected is through the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and contracts.

It is reported that there is an obligation for passive infrastructure sharing in Botswana to deliver telecom services to end users. Moreover, passive infrastructure sharing is practised in the mobile and fixed sectors based on commercial agreements.

The Botswana Telecommunications Corporation Limited (BTCL) is a telecommunications company formerly a government parastatal. Clause 6.2 of the Constitution of the BTCL states that no shares shall be issued to foreigners. Therefore, foreigners cannot own shares in this telecommunications company, which is also Botswana's only listed telecommunications company.

State-owned enterprises operating in the telecommunications sector in Botswana are Botswana Telecommunications Corporation Ltd (BTCL), a provider of telecommunications and Internet services (ISP), and Botswana Fibre Networks (BoFiNet), a wholesale provider of telecommunications infrastructure responsible for enhancing broadband penetration. The Government of Botswana reportedly owns 51% of the shares of BTCL and 100% of the shares of BoFiNet.

It is reported that Botswana does not mandate functional separation for operators with significant market power (SMP) in the telecom market. However, there has been an obligation to separate the accounts since 2012.

Botswana has not appended the World Trade Organization (WTO) Telecom Reference Paper to its schedule of commitments.

Botswana is not a party to the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) nor does it have observer status.

The Botswana Telecommunications Corporation Limited (BTCL) is a telecom company and was formerly a government parastatal. According to Clause 6.2 of the Constitution of the BTCL, no shares shall be issued to foreigners. Therefore, foreigners cannot own shares in this telecommunications company, which is also the only listed telecommunications company in Botswana.

Art. 17 of the Trade Act grants the Minister the authority to designate specific trades or businesses as exclusively reserved for citizens of Botswana or companies wholly owned by Botswana citizens. In line with Section 24 of the Trade Regulations, the businesses reserved for locals include, among others, cell phone shops and internet cafés. However, joint ventures between citizens and non-citizens may be approved by the Minister responsible for medium and large enterprises.

Section 145 of the Companies Act provides that a public company shall have at least two directors, and a private company shall have at least one director who shall be ordinarily resident in Botswana.

The Botswana Investment and Trade Centre (BITC) was established by the Botswana Investment and Trade Centre Act. Part V of the Act sets the functions, powers and duties of the Centre, which screens all proposed investments to ensure that they fall within the set priority investment sectors. An investment application is likely to succeed if it demonstrates some of the following:
- Number and quality/level of employment created;
- Potential for skills and technology transfer;
- Potential for export and import substitution;
- Potential to create backward and forward linkages;
- Innovation and creativity;
- Priority sector under the Economic Diversification Drive (EDD).

Botswana is not a signatory of the 1996 World Trade Organization (WTO) Information Technology Agreement (ITA) nor the 2015 expansion (ITA II).

Section 76 of the Public Procurement Act stipulates that, except as otherwise provided under this Act, all works, services, and supplies procurement should be reserved for a citizen or national contractor. In particular, certain procurement activities are reserved for local producers or suppliers. These include:
- Procurement activity offered only by a fully national-owned MSME;
- Goods manufactured locally by a fully national contractor;
- Services provided by a citizen or a fully national contractor;
- A procurement activity intended to promote innovation, local technology, and the commercialisation of the procurement activity; and
- The creation of jobs, capacity-building, and skills transfer.
Further details about reservation schemes can be found in Regulation 88 of the Public Procurement Regulations.
The Public Procurement Act repealed the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act, which contained a different reservation scheme. Section 71 of the repealed Act provided that reservation schemes applied to procurement of the following nature: low complexity; limited scale; repetitive in nature; having a financial ceiling; open only to citizen contractors; and based only on competition among the eligible contractors in the classification in question.