17 Mar 2016

The Assistant Minister of Education and Skills Development, Mr Fedelis Molao, recently hosted a Swedish delegation led by deputy minister of higher education, Dr Karin Roding.

Mr Molao said Botswana came a long way with Sweden in terms of diplomatic relations. 

He said Botswana was lagging behind in terms of skills and competencies of trainers in technical institutions.

“The mining industry has shortage of artisans and I believe that your visit and collaboration will help us a great deal,” he expressed.

He stated that they were grappling with the Technical, Vocational Education and Training (TVET) system because most of the facilitators were not well trained.

“This is an area that we believe our close ties will help to close the gaps, such as facilitating an exchange programme where technical lecturers in Sweden, would come to join our technical colleges and impart the knowledge which is at par with the international trend,” he said.

Mr Molao commended the 13 vice chancellors from different Swedish universities, director generals for research funding who had the opportunity to meet with BUIST management and Chamber of Mining, saying that it was a good platform for information exchange.

“Our vision as Botswana is to make our country to be a centre of excellence which could attract international students to study in Botswana,” he stated.

Mr Molao admitted that Botswana was still struggling in terms of raising enough capital to train Batswana, and highlighted that, it is such collaboration and partnership which could help with speed in terms of transforming the education sector and the economy.

For her part,Dr Roding said the purpose of their visit was to strengthen the relationship between Sweden and Botswana as well as find new ways to help each other particularly in the field if tertiary education.

“Internationalisation is a top priority from our government and we try to deepen our relations with the parts of the world. It also means that our universities will learn more about Botswana education but also find different possibilities of collaboration,” he said.

She said on the part of Sweden government point of view, they would like to remove obstacles, and as universities were autonomous, it was important that they themselves should decide if they were interested in conducting researches in high education.

Dr Roding confrmed that there were low number of students incoming to Sweden for studies.

“We will also try to address the issues relating to young researchers and their possibilities to have a sustainable career with the university,” she said. Ends