24 Mar 2019

The development of the South-South and Triangular Cooperation Strategy for Botswana is an important foreign policy initiative, the Minister for Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration, Mr Nonofo Molefhi, has said.

In his remarks during the Second High level United Nations Conference on the South-South Cooperation at Buenos Aires, Argentina, Mr Molefhi said Botswana’s South-South and Triangular Cooperation Strategy was in the final stages and was expected to be adopted and functional before the end of this year

Once completed, he said, the strategy would be an essential tool for advancing the country's economic diplomacy by providing a structure for effective and coherent implementation of national efforts.

“We also hope the strategy will contribute to our efforts to transition from heavy reliance on natural resources to sustainable development,” he said.

“We see the strategy as a vehicle for enhanced implementation of existing national plans and policies, namely; Vision 2036, the National Development Plan 11 (NDP11) of 2017 to 2023, the Urban and District Development Plans as well as the National Roadmap for Sustainable Development,” he added.

Botswana, like many other countries, had been engaged in South-South and Triangular Cooperation for many years, but the efforts were largely uncoordinated.

To address this, he said government had taken a decision to institutionalise and scale up the activities- particularly their monitoring and evaluation, stressing that there was need to create an institutional framework for coordinating the South-South Cooperation activities.

“Thus, the strategy envisages that the activity will be coordinated by the Ministry of International Affairs and Cooperation given its role as the coordinator of international cooperation,” he added.

Minister Molefhi also noted that Botswana was the first African country to embark on the route to develop a South-South Cooperation and Triangular Cooperation Strategy and thanked the United Nations Development Programme, Africa Office, for having come to the country’s aid in that regard.

“Botswana sees herself as both a provider and recipient of South-South and Triangular Cooperation, a country that can share in its experiences of good macro-economic policies, good governance and transparency, as well as its achievements in sectors, such as; diamond beneficiation, livestock farming, tourism and financial services,” said the minister.

Sharing Botswana’s thoughts on the strategy, Mr Molefhi said as a provider of South-South Cooperation, the country could advance the African and global agenda in a cost-effective way, born out of solidarity, trust and mutual interest.

However, in moving away from northern donor-recipient classifications, he said Botswana saw itself more as a development partner.

Instead of providing strict recipient-provider classifications, he said Botswana’s strategy described areas for common sharing of interests and technologies with the Global South and also highlighted its areas of expertise to better facilitate, and market potential South-South Cooperation and Triangular Cooperation initiatives, and to direct areas in which it welcomed enhanced support.

The alignment of the country’s strategy to the national vision, Vision 2036, he said was no accident, as the Vision outlined Botswana’s four priority areas of: Sustainable economic development; Human and social development, Sustainable environment; and Governance, peace and security.

These priorities, Mr Molefhi said would be delivered through NDP 11, themed: “Inclusive growth for the realisation of sustainable employment creation and poverty eradication.”

South-South cooperation is a broad framework of collaboration among countries of the South in the political, economic, social, cultural, environmental and technical domains.

Involving two or more developing countries, it could take place on a bilateral, regional, intraregional or interregional basis.  ENDS