21 Mar 2017

Gabon, Egypt and New Zealand’s new envoys to Botswana presented their letters of credence to President Lt Gen. Dr Seretse Khama Ian Khama on Monday.

The three envoys are Ambassador Andrè William Anguilé of Gabon, Ambassador Sherif Issa of Egypt and High Commissioner of New Zealand to Botswana Mike Burrell.

Speaking in an interview, shortly after presenting his credentials, Mr Anguilé said Botswana and Gabon had a lot in common in terms of the size of their populations and economic performance.

“Unfortunately, due to the distance and history of our continents, our relations have been slow to reach a scale which we would have loved to,” he said.

For this reason, he said his mission in Botswana would endeavor to reverse the trend and ensure that “our two people and our two economies get closer for the betterment of the continent.”

“I am one of the most vibrant promoters of intra-Africa trade. I believe that our continent has all the riches and the necessary tools to be able to be viable and I know that Botswana has one of the best beef in the world, if not the continent,” he said.

Since Gabon’s meat is of quality, he said instead of going out of the continent to get meat, the two nations could trade in that regard.

“Once we’ve taken this trend and once we’ve set the pace things will happen. It will be like a trickledown effect,” he added.

For people from Botswana and Gabon to know each other better, he said the two countries needed to organise cultural and sport events for them to attend.

The youth, he said also had an important role to play and that could be nurtured or cultivated by organising holiday camps for them in both Botswana and Gabon.

He said Botswana and Gabon’s Presidents were best defenders of the continent’s environment and anti-poaching campaign and this needed to be instilled on future generations, to better defend the continent.

For his part, Ambassador of Egypt to Botswana, Mr Sherif Issa, said his plan was to concentrate more on capacity building, “as I know that Botswana is struggling with its development plan and this needs a lot of capacity building and training courses.”

In Egypt, Mr Issa said there was a new agency for development, which was a distinguished body that could help a lot in Botswana’s development plan, by offering training courses that Botswana might need.

For example, he said Egypt stood in a good position in the field of irrigation, agriculture, engineering and renewed energy and could assist Botswana in this regard.

“We have good trainers. We can send some of the experts from Egypt here to train some officials working in different fields in Botswana. Plus we can also receive trainers who want to train in Egypt and we can offer the courses the way Botswana would want,” he added.

Since Botswana and Egypt  began relations in early 90s, Ambassador Issa said his country had benefited a lot from the relationship that the two countries shared. With Botswana being a member of the African Union and United Nations, he said Egypt counted on Botswana’s votes concerning its nominations and its moves.

“Now we are members of the Security Council and we hope that with the support of Botswana we will find our place in many of the nominations that we are running for. For example, we are running for the UNESCO and the membership of the North Region, in the World Tourism Organisation, which will take place in October 2017,” he said.

“And we hope that all our nominations will find support from Botswana. Botswana is a promising country. The development in Botswana is remarkable and also the way the elections and political regime is going on in Botswana gives the indication that this country is enjoying the security and stability it needs for development,” he added.

With the help of Botswana, Mr Issa said Egypt could win its fight against the big challenge of terrorism attacks that it was facing, especially in Sinai. Egypt, he said needed to achieve stability, preserve it and build on it had for the development and the good of the people of Egypt.

For his part, Mr Burrell, said Botswana and New Zealand were both very small countries in a world with very large countries and their friendship meant a lot to them, “because we feel that we have a lot of common ground, as we are also both English speaking countries.”

The rule of law and the kinds of democracies that the two nations had, he said were worth defending and taking forward.

“We are relatively new comers to this region, in terms of our rule of law, so we are learning as we go along. So, having friendly nations, such as Botswana, is absolutely critical to us,” he said.

“When we were working on the Security Council we often turned to Botswana for advice and the advice was very frank and very friendly and always extremely welcome,” he added.

He commended his predecessor for having set a strong platform and achieved many things for the two countries’ relations.

“We have partnership around agriculture and I would like to see that pick up some pace and I think we can do a bit more,” said Ambassador Burrell.

In the area of scholarships and education, he said he would like to see many Batswana studying in New Zealand. Another area that the two country could benefit from, he said was trade, “as we think that Botswana and New Zealand could trade a lot more goods, services and of course tourism in both directions.”

He said there was also an opportunity for Botswana and New Zealand companies to tap on investment opportunities in both countries for future investments between their countries.

The three envoys will be based in Pretoria, South Africa. ENDS