18 Dec 2017

Minister of Tertiary Education, Research, Science and Technology, Dr Alfred Madigele has said government would continue to work with other partners to deliver quality and relevant education.

Speaking at the Botswana Chamber of Mines (BCM) certificates handover ceremony in Gaborone on Friday, Dr Madigele said it was within this context that the partnership between the government of Botswana, BCM and Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenabeit (GIZ) was birthed.

He said the tripartite arrangement had added value to the development of vocational skills that were aligned to the needs of the industry and this partnership. He said it was arguably one of the successful public private partnerships that had ever been undertaken in Botswana.

Dr Madigele said the collaboration dates back to 2013 whenthe then Ministry of Education and Skills Development partnered with BCM to ensure the development of a highly skilled labour force.

He said the partnership supports further government initiative to align institutions closer to the industry, which is a key aim of his ministry to produce graduates who are ready to serve in different sectors of the economy.

Minister Madigele said the close collaboration between industry and training institutions would  go a long way in ensuring that the problem of skills mismatch is minimised and said his ministry had partnered with the private sector to provide high quality and relevant vocational and technical training.

He said the type of partnership is what is desired as the ministry strives towards ensuring that it meets the demands of the labour market and challenged other sectors of the economy to emulate mining, minerals, water and energy sectors through BCM for taking ownership of the development of vocational skills and engaging government to guarantee high level training with an increased focus on practical training.

In his welcoming remarks, chief executive officer of BCM, Mr Charles Siwawa said the four- year programme was not an easy task both fro students and the organisers, but he was happy that results were positive.

He said the initiative was driven under the auspices of BCM through mining, minerals, water and energy sector of water resource sector of the HRDC and was in line with keeping the aspirations of the National Human Resource Development Strategy.

Mr Siwawa said both BCM and the Ministry of Tertiary Education, Research, Science and Technology recognised the need to provide appropriate training that would yield work-ready graduates in line with Botswana’s quest to be globally competitive. A total of 91 men and women graduated in six different fields. BOPA