27 Jan 2019

President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi says Botswana’s maiden attendance of the World Economic Forum has been an enriching experience.

Speaking at a brief media session at the Sir Seretse Khama International Airport upon arrival from Davos, Switzerland on January 26, Dr Masisi said the 49th session of the World Economic Forum, which started last week, offered Botswana a relaxed, engaging and issue based format, whose purpose was to find solutions to intractable problems the world was faced with.

“This year’s focus was on  globalisation 4.0 and dealing with issues that present themselves whether in the financial space or in the international relations space and generally multilateralism.

I was privileged to attend a number of panels at which I participated, I engaged with a number of leaders and had one on one meetings with at least three presidents,” said Dr Masisi.

Dr Masisi said the Botswana delegation was delighted by the warm reception of the World Economic Forum founder, Professor Klaus Schwab.

“There was a lot of excitement when we told the Botswana story, excitement in the sense that when you look at the world economy, the advanced economies are growing marginally if at all, the emerging large economies attract a lot of Foreign Direct Investment and they do return, but Africa, particularly with the continental free trade area and value proposition brought about by the emergence of economic ecosystem in Africa,” he added.

Dr Masisi noted that Switzerland was saturated not only with wealth, but by science, technology, innovation and willingness to venture out.

“If we are to transform our economy and develop into a knowledge based economy, it is important that we partner and engage with those already operating in that space and Switzerland presents exactly that.

We want to reconfigure our mission there so that it does more penetrative work,” he said.

For her part, Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry Ms Bogolo Kenewendo reiterated Dr Masisi’s stance that the Botswana delegation held fruitful interactions in Davos. Ms Kenewendo met with United Kingdom’s Dr Liam Fox and her South African counterpart Mr Rob Davies with regards to the Brexit deal.

“Botswana does not want to have any trade disruptions and has started a trade agreement with the UK, but met a few challenges.  We made some concessions through which we hope to see SACU and the UK reaching a trade agreement by the end of February.

As you know the no deal situation that could happen by the end of March would lead to some of our most precious trade being disrupted.
Essentially we wouldn’t be able to export our beef to the UK. We are trying to protect our interests as much as possible,” said Minister Kenewendo. Ends