25 Nov 2018

The Minister of Nationality, Immigration and Gender Affairs, Ms Dorcas Makgato, says she has been impressed by the diverse products exhibited at the northern women exposition.

Giving a keynote address after she toured the stalls at the expo in Francistown on November 23, Ms Makgato said most of the products showed zeal for creativity innovation whilst others such as panel beating, construction and manufacturing were from male dominated fields.

She noted that it was encouraging that some women decided to diversify their products away from the usual products such as those of agriculture. 

Ms Makgato was hopeful to see even bigger and more diverse exhibition next year. 

She said most of the products were of international standards and she thus encouraged women to work harder as well as come up with creative products that could penetrate the market.

She warned women to guard against their business intelligence saying they should not share it with other people unless there was financial agreement.

Ms Makgato also appealed to women in business to re-invest their businesses in order for them to flourish, indicating that statistics showed that 55 per cent of families in Botswana were female headed.

“This is why government is concerned with the social, economic, and educational empowerment of women,” she said. Ms Makgato also challenged women to create employment and assist government in fighting poverty, especially amongst women. 

She said government had already injected P128 million in funding women to establish businesses in order to improve their lives.

“Government is concerned about your social being and that is why government came up with this fund to capacitate women,” she added.

She therefore called on women to use technologies such as social media to market their products and services and adopt different t ways of doing business.

Ms Makgato explained that she would play her part as the minister responsible for gender affairs, to lobby government to continue empowering women but cautioned women to come up with sustainable projects. 

She explained that exhibition such as this one assisted women to engage and create networks as well as to share experiences whilst at the same time marketing and selling their products. 

In her remarks, Francistown mayor, Ms Sylvia Muzila, enchoed sentiments that there was a lot of diversification of products in their year’s expo.She said Francistown City Council had signed an agreement that a certain percentages of tenders from the council would be reserved for women.

Winners were awarded certificates in level one, two and three.The minister’s price of P10 000 went to Ms Ofentse Phodiso of Offline Services, a company dealing in photography. ENDS