14 Mar 2016

Motshelo is an old Setswana practice that encourages the culture of saving as a group of friends or as a community. This self-help economic scheme, dates back centuries in the history of Botswana. 

It was there long before the advent of money. Women used to come together and uplift each other in many aspects of their daily lives and consequently promoting the notion that together everybody achieves more.

As women continued to build each other socially and economically, it became a formidable force to a point of engineering the concept of Motshelo. 

The concept gained more prominence when the rate of exchange became monetary. Women who were meagerly remunerated decided to group themselves and took turns to give an accumulation of the money to others on a rotational basis. 

Through the concept, one could have a sizeable amount of money from the group. It was also through such Motshelo that women were able to purchase goods that were beyond their remuneration standards. 

The tradition was observed over a couple of years and has now been adopted widely by many. 

Delivering her keynote address at the Inaugural Women in Business Association (WIBA) Motshelo high tea event on Saturday 12, Barclays Bank Botswana managing director, Ms Rienette van der Merwe said the bank encouraged the idea of coming together to save for a community goal or a business goal, “and it’s our wish to ensure that Motshelo realises its full potential.” 

Motshelo, Ms van der Merwe said, gave women the power to be active members of the main stream economy. 

The timing of the high tea occasion, she said, could not have been better with March being the International Women’s Month, whose 2016 theme is: A pledge for parity. 

She noted that the theme calls for gender parity acceleration, and urged every woman to pledge and to take action to ensure that a women and girls' future in Botswana was equally rewarding. 

The struggle for equality, she said, did not belong to a single feminist or to any one organisation, but required collective efforts of all those who cared about human rights. 

The high tea event was themed: Insights to share ideas to win, and Ms van der Merwe said the tea would be an annual event to bring women together to engage on pertinent issues, share ideas and insights and interact and have fun. 

Through the inaugural event, she said “WIBA aims to provide value for women’s involvement and excitement, something to look forward to on an annual social calendar.”

As an association, she said WIBA had the sole mandate of spearheading the concerns of women in business. 

To achieve this, she said WIBA continues to encourage members to interact and to engage in effective forms of networking which brought about various economic initiatives. 

She commended WIBA for embracing the Motshelo concept and for its drive in the journey of empowering women and girls. 

“It’s through your unwavering courage and encouragement of these women and children that they can execute according to their live plans. And it’s also you that support these women to being heard, that help them to participate and be included in these Motshelo dealings,” she added.

Barclays Bank, she said, would continue to support WIBA on its mission and would ensure that it remained committed to pushing the female agenda within the bank. She noted that Barclays Bank Botswana had more women than men, saying of its around 1 200 staffmembers , 831 were women. 

Research, Ms van der Merwe said, had shown that networking could increase the likelihood of success, adding that “if fear is the only thing standing in your way, then you actually have nothing standing in your way.

“It is actually about believing in yourself as well and having a base and a group of people that actually believe in you, as well as people who support you. And I think Batswana women are miles ahead of other groups of women in terms of coming together and supporting each other by the Motshelo accounts and Motshelo goals,” she added.

She said her bank saw it fit to develop a group savings account called Barckays Motshelo Account targeted at both women and men interested in saving together for a common goal. 

The savings account, she said, leveraged existing norms and cultures that promoted team work, self-help and financial discipline. The account, she said, also encouraged full participation by all team members through transparent bank accounts, bank statements and SMS alerts which were received by two of the nominated members on all of the transactions on the account.

“We have assisted over 35 000 Batswana through the Motshelo account. This translates to over 3 500 accounts with an average of 10 members per group. About 70 per cent of these are from women,” she said. ENDS