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The inquiry attempted to investigate what influences the prosperity of young and female-led businesses in Botswana with a focus on management capabilities/competencies, policies, and entrepreneurial programs for entrepreneurial empowerment in general so that practical solutions can be offered to fill identified research gaps. The mixed method technique used in the inquiry allowed for data collection, optimal sample utilization, and data analysis. The inquiry improved the rigor of the respondents’ participation by employing a mixed-method paradigm to survey 384 people and interview key informants. Moreover, the research employed a standardized survey containing questions that were closed-ended, and the research information gathered was numerical in nature. However, to enable a thorough investigation of the success factors for women- and youth-owned firms, a qualitative method was used to interview 16 key informants and acted as a secondary data source to gather more insights on the subject matter. Following data editing, coding, and tabulation, descriptive and inferential statistics were used to assess the quantitative data. Additionally, the qualitative data was subjected to content or thematic analysis. The results showed that managerial competencies had a favourable impact on the success of businesses run by women and young people. On the contrary, the findings revealed that entrepreneurial education programs did not significantly predict managerial capabilities, which reflects a genuine absence of a linear relationship in this sample rather than an issue with insufficient data. Conversely, the ANOVA test confirms that the overall regression model is statistically significant when managerial capabilities was used as a mediator of the relationship between entrepreneurial training programs and enterprise success. This demonstrates that entrepreneurial training programs and managerial capabilities jointly explain a statistically significant amount of variance in enterprise success. Moreover, government policies and support programs (as moderator) demonstrated a statistically significant positive direct relationship with managerial capabilities in model 1. Conversely, the moderation effect (model 2) of government policies and systems on entrepreneurial training programs showed a non-significant direct relationship. This explains why government policies are viewed as not effective. Governmental entities responsible for SMME development will find value in the study’s conclusions which will act as a manual for them to set up workshops, seminars, and training programs for SMMEs. However, this is so because strong managerial capabilities have a direct and favourable impact on the performance of women- and youth-led businesses. Nonetheless, because of the research gaps that have been identified, future studies will provide an opportunity to comprehend the management gaps that impact women and young entrepreneurs in Botswana more thoroughly and create solutions that would encourage the expansion of these enterprises.