Their French coach Didier Gomes da Rosa left after four of their six qualifiers to take up a club job in Libya, leaving the South African-born Morena Ramoreboli to take interim and get them over the line.
The 44-year-old made his name in taking unfancied Jwaneng Galaxy to the group stage of the African Champions League in 2023 and with many of his club’s players in the national team was an obvious choice for the last two fixtures in the qualifying group where Botswana needed a draw away against highly fancied Egypt to qualify - a score few would have given them any chance of achieving.
The 1-1 result was enough to get them over the line in Cairo.
“Honestly speaking first, let me say it was how we planned for the game,” Ramoreboli told Flashscore. “One, we knew that they would want to keep the ball and secondly that they would change the team and bring in a lot of quick players. We had to simplify our approach and tighten up our defence and we knew that by doing that we might have a chance.
“We were very fortunate to get a goal early, which I think helped us to settle quicker into the match. When you score early against a top team, it gives the players belief. It was also very simple again to motivate them at halftime because they knew they had to survive for 45 minutes to qualify.”
Botswana finished second in their group to qualify for the first time since their debut Cup of Nations appearance in 2012, when they lost all three games to Ghana (0-1), Guinea (1-6) and Mali (1-2).
Ramoreboli was last January handed the job on a full-time basis. He had to make swift adjustments when he first stepped in.
“It was not an easy step because each coach has his own tactics, his own beliefs. I was coming into a team that had just won two matches (against Libya) from playing on a low block, managing to score two goals and not conceding.
“Those two matches put them in a position to qualify for the Cup of Nations. I felt coming into the job a lot was expected of me, I had meetings with the players, just to understand what was happening.
“And after that, I told myself that, ‘yes, I'm going to bring some changes, but I'm not going to move too much away from what the coach was doing’. What the coach (Da Gomes Rosa) did was lay the foundation.
“So, it was easy for me to manage and control certain things, but to be honest with you, I didn’t make too many changes because I didn’t want to start something new because whatever the coach had been doing was working.”
Now he is hoping to shake things up in Morocco, even if not many Botswana players are based at clubs outside the country.
“I think when you compete at the Cup of Nations finals, or when you compete and doing well in continental competition, that's when outside clubs take more interest in Botswana. At the moment, we only have four players who are playing outside the country, and they are playing in north Africa.
“Now we if we want to increase the pool of players going outside, we need to firstly be stable in our performance, and we should always be competing for places in major tournaments. That is when the scouts will come.”
Botswana are in Group D that also includes Senegal, Benin and DR Congo, with all three teams presenting a mighty challenge in their own way.
“We are in a group that includes teams with great experience and competitiveness. We know very well the history of the teams that are with us and we know how they performed in previous AFCONs,” Ramoreboli said.
“The draw gives us the opportunity to test our strength against the top teams in Africa, and we have no doubts about what we can do or how well we will perform in the competition.
“We have to respect everyone and we know that our mission will not be easy, but we will fight and do our best.
“We need to leave a mark at AFCON 2025. The goal is to perform well, dominate games, and achieve positive results. Success would mean being remembered as one of the teams that competed fiercely and represented Botswana with pride.”
Ramoreboli also had a message for the fans, who he urged to get behind the team no matter what the outcome in Morocco.
“The players need your support and confidence, especially since many of them are locally-based and competing against players they used to watch on TV.
“The fans’ positivity during the qualifiers pushed us forward, and we need that same energy as we head to AFCON.”