22 Dec 2016

Sowa Town Council in partnership Botswana Ash will, in April,  host a stakeholders conference as part of their strategy to speed up developments in the town.

Addressing a full council recently, Sowa mayor, Mr George Maphane, said hosting the conference was one of their efforts of taking the driving seat in bringing developments to their town.

The conference, he said, would have all their development partners meeting and engaging in discussions to map a way forward since they strived to work together towards developing the town.

He added that it was upon their discussions and drawing position papers which they had since delivered to different relevant authorities that they as well decided to take a lead in towards seeing to it that they work together with their stakeholders to bring developments which help to attract foreign and even local investors to come and set their businesses in the town.

The mayor further noted that although through the government’s Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP) they have received much and even in the next National Development Plan 11 (NDP11), they are still looking forward to the government to come to play in their initiative.

On other issues, the mayor highlighted that Sowa has not yet started implementing projects under Local Economic Development (LED).

However, he said the community has identified catalytic projects amongst them Makgadikgadi Scenic view and other complementary projects of construction of a lodge, cultural village and snake park to the one of the first projects to be undertaken upon the availability of funds.

He asserted that funding of these projects is solely going to come from the community themselves and as such they are going to work hand in hand with other stakeholders to find sources which can generate funds that will facilitate the implementation of their planned projects.

In addition, councilor Maphane highlighted that as part of their strategies to empower those who will be spearheading the LED projects, the authority sent the technical team to training workshops where they were capacitated to be ready to drive the projects. ENDS