22 Apr 2018

Assistant Minister of Youth Empowerment, Sport and Culture Development, Mr Dikgang Makgalemele has encouraged members of co-operatives to actively take part in their daily running.

   Mr Makgalemele said this year’s theme, ‘Member involvement and engagement’ was therefore important in further encouraging co-operatives members to actively take part in their daily running.

He noted that co-operatives were important because their existence addressed issues such as youth unemployment and also helped in diversifying the economy. “I urge you to come up with ways of involving the youth in the running of cooperatives so as to curb the problem of unemployment,” he added.

Mr Makgalemele also encouraged the youth to join co-operatives and come up with innovative ways that could place them in a better position to compete and sell their products to other countries.

Further, he said youth could start co-operatives in areas of mining, tourism as well as manufacturing. He highlighted that the Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry also assisted in registering co-operatives, conducting research, offering training and also advising co-operatives to choose businesses that would help them penetrate foreign markets with ease.

 Mr Makgalemele further indicated that government would continue to increase opportunities and agreements such as SADC Free Trade Area, SADC/EU Economic Partnership, among others, so as to allow members to benefit as the Economic Partnership Agreement had no limit of goods which were sold to foreign markets and also there was no tax paid when selling such goods.

  For his part, Botswana Co-operative Association Limited vice chairperson, Mr Tebogo Venson said co-operatives were important because they helped eradicate poverty as they created jobs, especially for the youth who were mostly affected by unemployment.