The story
Lobatse Beef Festival in Lobatse
Lobatse Beef Festival celebrates the town built around Botswana's national abattoir, opened by the Botswana Meat Commission in 1954, pairing braai competitions and meat tastings with cattle displays that tie directly into the town's identity as the country's historic beef-export capital. Local press coverage confirms the event has run, though not necessarily every year without gaps.
Lobatse has been synonymous with Botswana's cattle economy since 1954, when the Botswana Meat Commission opened its abattoir there and turned the town into the country's main point for slaughtering and exporting beef, historically one of the larger single abattoirs in southern Africa and for decades the backbone of Botswana's export earnings outside diamonds.