11 Aug 2016

The Women’s Business Directory, through the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs, has empowered women involved in business.

In an interview, the permanent secretary in the home affairs ministry, Ms Pearl Ramokoka, said her ministry, cognisant of government’s pledge to Batswana had worked on improving women entrepreneurs’ access to their targeted market through the directory.

“Subsequent to the government’s pledge to remove Batswana out of poverty, we came up with a women’s directory to assist female entrepreneurs, having noticed that they tend to struggle to access markets,” she said.

Ms Ramokoka said the directory featured profiles and contacts of businesses owned by women, who were assisted to set up businesses by the Department of Gender Affairs, the Ministry of Youth Sports and Culture’s Youth Development Fund (YDF), Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA), the poverty eradication programme and other government support systems.

“We decided not to provided a threshold of who can be involved in the business directory, as we risked leaving out enterprising women who badly need the visibility we provide through the directory,” she said.

The directory provided profiles of companies, including the name, location and contact details and picture profiles of companies involved in various trades such as bakery, basket making, brick production, fish production, food processing, tree nursery, tent hire, jumping castle hire, pottery, dairy production, construction among other businesses.

The gender affairs department, located in the ministry, piloted the project as a means of ensuring the full integration of women into the mainstream of economic participation of women in the country’s economy.

Ms Ramokoka said  government provided targeted financial grants to women as a form of empowerment, but accessibility to markets remains a challenge, and the directory is one means of making an improvement in that regard.

“The directory also supplements the Economic Diversification Drive (EDD), which is meant to improve domestic consumption of local produce and also diversify products for the export market,” Ms Ramokoka said. 

The initiatives were part of government’s pledge to make job creation a number one priority; take Batswana out of poverty; to increase education funding; to eliminate mother to child transmission as well as fighting corruption in all its manifestations.  Ends