Lesego Chombo who won the Miss Botswana 2022 and Miss World Africa 2024 crowns, made history in November, becoming Botswana's youngest cabinet minister.
According to BBC, the 26-year-old working lawyer and owner of charitable foundation impressed Botswana's incoming President Duma Boko, whose Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) had just won a landslide, ousting the party that had governed for 58 years.
He made her minister of youth and gender.
"I've never been more proud to be young," she told the BBC at the ministry's headquarters in the capital, Gaborone.
"I'm a young person living in Botswana, passionate about youth development, gender equality, but also so passionate about the development of children."
The beauty queen did not campaign to be an MP - she is what is called a specially elected member of parliament - and is now one of just six female MPs in the 69-member National Assembly.
Chombo said becoming an MP and then minister came as a complete surprise to her.
"I got appointed by a president who had never met me," she said.
"Miss World and the journey that I thought I was supposed to pursue as my final destination was only the platform through which I would be seen for this very role."
It was her crowning as Miss Botswana in 2022 that raised her profile and enabled her to campaign for social change, while trying to inspire other young women.
It also gave her the opportunity to set up the Lesego Chombo Foundation, which focuses on supporting disadvantaged youngsters and their parents in rural areas – and which she is still involved with, its projects funded by corporate companies and others.
