22 Jun 2015

Women have a significant role in the economy, hence the need to avail resources including access to credit and ownership of productive resources including technology to enhance their contribution in food security and economic strength.

Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs permanent secretary, Ms Pearl Matome said this when briefing journalists about the upcoming National Women’s Exposition scheduled for June 23 to 28.

While there had been a great deal of progress in the fight against poverty and gender inequity, she said women remained the majority of the world’s poorest, and the gender gap in economic, social and political spheres remained a challenge.

Despite all this, Ms Matome expressed gratitude that the government of Botswana had made deliberate efforts to address such challenges.

She said several strategies had been adopted for the economic empowerment of women, which included disbursement of funds to women to start income generating activities, capacity building on business acumen and exposure of women entrepreneurs into the trade sphere.

For the past 10 years (2004 – 2014), she said, the government had funded a total of 310 women’s groups at a total cost of more than P34 million as part of efforts towards women’s economic empowerment. This funding, she said benefitted a total of 2 480 individuals, who could have been unemployed or even destitute.

Furthermore, in as far as capacity building and entrepreneurship is concerned, she said government established mechanisms to support women in business.

These, she said included providing technical support where women are trained on the specialised areas of their businesses, such as bread and confectioneries, food processing, detergents making and animal husbandry.

She said a total of 139 individuals were trained in 2013/14 at a total cost of more than P1 million, “which means that our economy has 139 skilled women entrepreneurs who can contribute to economic diversification in this country.”

Additionally, she said the government also supported women entrepreneurs in accessing markets locally, regionally and internationally- the Botswana Women’s Exposition being one of them.

To date, Ms Matome said Women’s Expo had grown in enrolment of women exhibitors from 70 in 1999 to 350 in 2015. This, she said included the introduction of the Northern Exposition which was started in 2013 with an enrolment of 150 exhibitors.

“We will be hosting the third Northern Women’s Expo from July 21 to August 2, 2015. About P1.2 million has been used to resuscitate the ailing projects which have otherwise collapsed,” she said.

She thanked Orange Botswana for partnering with them for the second time in a row in driving women economic empowerment and urged other non-state actors to actively partner with them in driving the gender agenda in Botswana.

For her part, Orange Botswana public relations manager, Ms Boga Chilinde-Masebu said empowering women to eradicate poverty was a corner stone of the Orange Foundation.
Therefore, she said Orange Botswana partnered in this initiative “because we share the same vision as the Department of Gender Affairs.

This year, Ms Chilinde-Masebu said Orange would be supporting the exposition with event publicity, through short message broadcasts and Television adverts.
“We do so to invite the public to visit the women stalls and explore the talent that they have.

This is a way of marketing their business and exposing them to the public,” she explained.

She said there would also be a special award for the most innovative and unique product service showcased by the women and also awards for the women entrepreneurs who would be graduating from the Gender Affairs Women economic empowerment programme.

“As Orange Foundation, we remain open to community collaborations to make Botswana a better place now and beyond. We trust that this year’s expo will be insightful and beneficial to the women entrepreneurs,” she said. Ends