28 Jan 2016

Vice President Mokgweetsi Masisi has urged institutions of higher learning to ensure the achievement of the national human resource development strategy.

Speaking during the official opening of Botho University Francistown campus yesterday, Mr Masisi said one of the goals was to harness the full human resource capacity of the nation by providing opportunities for Batswana.

This, he noted, would in turn help to realise their potential across all stages of the human resource development life cycle so as to build a stable, prosperous and globally competitive nation.

Mr Masisi said the 2014/15 Human Resources Development Council (HRDC) report indicated that the tertiary education sector has grown significantly in student enrolment from 20 011 in 2003/4 to 60 583 in 2014/15.

He said this resulted in a gross enrolment rate for the 18-24 year old group rising from about six per cent to 21 per cent.

The Vice President, however, said it could not be all about numbers as there were still unemployed graduates and skills mismatch between tertiary schools output and industry requirements.

“This challenges the tertiary education sector as a whole to re-look into the relevance of their programme offerings as well as the quality of the product,” he said.

Mr Masisi said the government was looking into various initiatives to re-skill and up skill some of the undergraduates to enhance their chances of employment or self-employment.

He noted that enrolment in post graduate programmes at masters and PhD levels were still low at about nine per cent and urged tertiary institutions to diversify their programmes and to increase their intake at the levels.

“Creating opportunities for research will contribute towards transition from factor driven economy to an efficiency driven one and ultimately to an innovation driven knowledge economy,” he said.

Vice President Masisi said the P75 million development of Botho University  in Francistown was a significant addition to investment in human capital development.

Assistant Minister of Education and Skills Development, Mr Fidelis Molao said the growth of Botho University does not only contribute to the growth of the education industry, but also to the attainment of Vision 2016 pillars.

He noted that Botho University was one of the institutions that have partnered with his ministry to fulfill the Target 20 000 of up-skilling and up-scaling programme.

Mr Molao said Botswana implements the Southern African Development Community (SADC) protocol on education and training through the study in Botswana initiative with the objective of making the country a preferred educational destination in certain areas.

Botho University Vice Chancellor, Ms Sheela Raja Ram said the Francistown Campus was a testimony of the success of the Public, Private Partnership (PPP) in higher education that the government embarked on.

She said the university has in nine years introduced 30 programmes including computing, accounting and finance, business, engineering, jewellery design and management.

Ms Raja Ram said the disciplines were not only critical to Botswana, but to other African economies as well.

 

She said the university has also invested in staff development, having spent almost P4million and that it has 156 staff members being funded to further their studies. Ends