News
What a basic basket costs in Botswana right now
We priced ten everyday groceries from the Game Botswana catalogue, the one Botswana catalogue in our data whose current cycle prices the full ten-item list. SPAR and Pick n Pay flyers are on file as short flyer pages, so they are described but not priced. All prices are as advertised in catalogues live on 3 August 2026.
Game BotswanaThe starting point for any household budget is the same short list: maize meal, baked beans, pilchards, corned meat, milk, cooking oil, tomato sauce, flour, toothpaste, and something for the children's lunchbox. We took that list to the current Botswana catalogues in our data.
Game's catalogue is extracted at product level, so Game is priced in this piece. SPAR Botswana's flyers in our data are short weekend and Wednesday pages carrying a handful of extracted lines each, none of them covering this ten-item list, and Pick n Pay's May flyer has no product-level prices extracted at all, so those two are described but not priced.
Choppies and Shoprite Botswana appear in our data as Facebook flyer captures rather than full catalogues, so they are named in this piece but not priced. This is a partial comparison, clearly labelled as such.
The ten-item baseline
At Game Botswana, whose current catalogue runs to 19 August 2026, the ten items price up like this:
| Item | Pack | Price (P) |
|---|---|---|
| White Star Super Maize Meal | 5 kg | 47.00 |
| KOO Baked Beans in Tomato Sauce | 410 g | 13.95 |
| Lucky Star Pilchards | 400 g | 29.95 |
| Clover UltraMel Full Cream Milk | 1 L | 21.95 |
| Excella Sunflower Oil | 2 L | 54.95 |
| All Gold Tomato Sauce | 700 ml | 27.95 |
| Bokomo White or Brown Bread Flour | 5 kg | 67.95 |
| Simba Potato Chips | 120 g | 14.95 |
| Colgate Toothpaste | 100 ml | 24.95 |
| Lucky Star Corned Meat | 300 g | 29.95 |
| Total | P333.55 |
That basket of ten singles at Game's catalogue prices is the honest baseline for this cycle, and it is the number to compare against the bundles below.
Where the data is thin
SPAR Botswana's flyers in our data are short SPARtacular Wednesday and weekend pages, with lines like SaveMor pantry basics, Chikka chicken and Clover yoghurts. No single SPAR page in the current window covers the ten-item basket, so SPAR is described here but not priced.
Where the same staple appears in the Game catalogue, the spread is real: baked beans run from P13.95, and a 1 L Clover UltraMel milk sits at P21.95.
Pick n Pay Botswana's flyer in our data is a May mid-month promo, undated in the file and held as pages only. It is not the current month-end catalogue, and its product-level prices are not extracted in our data, so this piece does not price it.
The bundles change the math
The bundles change the basket math more than any single item. Game's current catalogue carries a four-item combo at P189 (a 5 kg bag of White Star maize meal, a 5 kg bag of rice, a 3 kg bag of macaroni, and a 2 L bottle of cooking oil), and a bigger combo at P359 that takes a 12 kg bag of maize meal or a 10 kg bag of rice as the centre, then adds macaroni, oil, mayonnaise, and tomato sauce.
The maize meal alone in that big combo is P129 in the same catalogue.
From the catalogues
What this means for your basket: if you buy the ten singles at Game's current catalogue prices, the basket is P333.55. If the P189 combo covers four of your pantry staples and the pilchards, corned meat, and beans come off the singles list, the same shop lands noticeably lower. The reliable move is to build the list first, price it in the current catalogue, and treat any bundle that does not match your list as a discount you do not need. Prices here are the advertised prices in catalogues live on 3 August 2026; the Game cycle runs to 19 August, after which the numbers in this piece should be re-read against the fresh cycle on PriceMate.
See also
