The Church in Botswana

Latter-day Saints living in Botswana were organized into an official congregation in 1990, and missionaries arrived the same year. Since then, membership has grown to encompass several branches throughout the country.

Visit the Newsroom to see current events of the Church in Africa.

History of the Church in Botswana

Maurice Mzwinila and Anthony Mokgare joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints while studying in the United States. With no knowledge of each other, they believed they were the only Latter-day Saints in Botswana until missionaries from the South Africa Johannesburg Mission arrived in June 1990 and placed notices in local newspapers announcing they would begin holding church services in the capital city, Gaborone. A group of the newly united Latter-day Saints was organized in Gaborone on June 24, 1990. In 1991, the group became a branch, with Kwasi Agyare-Dwomoh, a Ghanaian man who had been baptized the previous year, as president.

A year later, the congregation had grown sufficiently to become two congregations, and Agyare-Dwomoh was called as president of the new Gaborone Botswana District to supervise the two branches. The district was dissolved in 1995 to allow district officers to serve in the branches; Botswana’s congregations were then placed under the supervision of the Roodepoort South Africa Stake rather than the mission headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa. As the Church spread outside of Gaborone, congregations were established in other areas, such as Lobatse in October 1992 and Francistown in April 1993.

Botswana’s Latter-day Saints did more than worship together on Sundays. They also served together, visiting orphanages and schools for the disabled and volunteering on projects to provide clean water and immunizations. Other projects from the Church included donating wheelchairs, training on maternal and newborn care, providing vision care, and offering a variety of local community projects. The first edition of the Book of Mormon in Tswana, Botswana’s most widely spoken language, was published in 2003. Another milestone was reached in 2012 when the Gaborone Botswana Stake was organized on November 4 with Clement Mosiami Matswagothata as president. On April 5, 2025, Matswagothata was sustained as a General Authority Seventy during the Church’s annual general conference.