Property – Retail & Commercial Property · Editorial
By Moakanyi Magazine · Global Issue · June 2026
A fuel station looks like the most stable retail asset on any Botswana high street, until the price on the gantry starts moving faster than the lease. Global physical crude markets are now mired in discounts as Middle East producers ramp up supply, and that distant volatility runs straight through to the economics of a forecourt in Gaborone, Francistown or Kasane. The site does not move, but the value of the business sitting on it does.
Botswana imports its refined fuel, so the pump price is set well upstream of the station itself. For a property owner, the question is no longer just footfall and frontage. It is whether the operator running the pumps can absorb a volatile margin and still pay rent on time, month after month, through whatever the oil market does next. Volatility, not the direction of prices, is the real risk to a forecourt lease.
The forecourt as a margin business, not a rent business
Fuel retail runs on thin per-litre margins and high volume. When wholesale prices swing, the operator wears the working-capital shock first: a tank filled at one price may be sold at another, and the cash needed to restock can jump overnight. A landlord whose income depends on that operator inherits the risk indirectly, which is why the strongest sites are those with diversified income.
A convenience shop, a quick-service food tenant, a car wash, atm fees and parcel collection all earn money that does not move with the barrel. On a well-configured site, fuel can become the traffic driver while the rest of the forecourt does much of the earning. Crude discounts can ease landed costs for a period, but the lesson of volatility is direction-neutral. What protects a site is the share of revenue that does not move with the oil price at all.
A forecourt that earns only from fuel is exposed to a price it cannot control.
Location logic shifts with the corridor
Botswana's fuel demand is concentrated along its trade and tourism corridors: the A1 spine through Gaborone, Lobatse and Francistown, the routes into Kasane and Maun, and the haulage lanes feeding the mines at Jwaneng and Orapa. Sites on these arteries see the steadiest throughput, which cushions volume even when margins compress. A station that moves large litres can survive on a smaller cut per litre.
Secondary and peri-urban sites are more fragile. When fuel economics tighten, the marginal station is the one with low traffic and no ancillary income, and that is the lease most likely to fall into arrears. For a landlord assessing a portfolio, the oil-price story is really a map: which forecourts sit on flows of traffic durable enough to ride out a squeeze, and which depend on conditions staying benign.
Throughput on a national corridor is the closest thing a forecourt has to a buffer.
What landlords can actually underwrite
A property owner cannot hedge the oil price, but can structure around it. Longer leases with creditworthy national operators reduce the chance of a sudden vacancy. Rent partly tied to non-fuel turnover lets the landlord share in the resilient income rather than only the volatile fuel margin. Capital set aside for tank, canopy and environmental compliance keeps the site lettable when one operator leaves and another must be found.
Each of these is a way of underwriting the operator and the site rather than the barrel of crude, which no Botswana landlord can influence. The discipline is to assume volatility as the base case and build the lease to survive it, instead of pricing the site on a calm period that will not last.
You underwrite the operator and the site, never the barrel.
Reading the site as part of a network
A single forecourt is also worth more when it sits inside a recognised brand network than when it stands alone. National operators bring procurement scale, a loyalty offer and a maintenance regime that an independent struggles to match, and they are better placed to absorb a volatile margin across many sites. For a landlord, a tenant with that breadth is a stronger covenant precisely because the oil-price risk is spread, not concentrated on one location.
The same logic applies to the support services around the pumps. Reliable supply, dependable card and mobile-money payment systems, and a steady convenience offer all keep customers returning regardless of the week's fuel price. The resilient forecourt is one wired into networks that smooth the shocks, rather than one left to face them on its own.
A forecourt inside a strong network rides shocks a lone site cannot.
Oil-market turbulence will keep arriving from far outside Botswana's control, and the current run of crude discounts is only the latest reminder. The forecourts that hold their value through it will be the diversified ones on busy corridors, leased to operators strong enough to ride the swings. For Botswana's commercial property owners, fuel-station resilience has become a question of structure, not just a question of location.
Sources: Reuters
