01 Apr 2019

Japan Ambassador to Botswana, Mr Kozo Takeda has signed a grant contract with the Kweneng District Council towards the construction of a classroom at Hatsalatladi Pre-school.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Mr Takeda said the Japanese government evaluated the Kweneng District Council’s request and took into consideration its initiative for early childhood education and a decision was reached to support the construction of the classroom.

Mr Takeda said his government released the grant amounting to about P615 000 for the project, which will enable about 40 children in the village to receive childhood education on an annual basis. 

He said the project was the last to be approved under the Japanese government’s Grant Assistance for Grass-Roots Human Security Projects for the fiscal year 2018 and it makes it the 56^th project of the GGP Grant since its launch in Botswana in 1997.

Botswana started early childhood education programme in 2013 in some regions and rolled it out to other regions in the following year. 

Mr Takeda noted some significant progress made by the government that resulted in the establishment of 531 public pre-schools in the past five years. 

Mr Takeda said the Japanese government had also introduced a new scholarship opportunity offered by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan.

The scholarship opportunity is for teachers who wish to conduct research on school education at designated Japanese universities as teacher training students.

He said this marked the 31^st year since the government of Japan introduced the Grant Assistance for Grass-Roots Human Security Projects to 141 countries in one region.

For his part, chairperson of the Kweneng District Council, Mr Jeffery Sibisibi said the donation was crucial as it addressed government efforts to provide a conducive learning environment for the young Batswana in order for the country to realise its goal of attaining sustainable human resources development.

He said a donation like this one was therefore of paramount importance as it helped to alleviate some developmental challenges.

He stated that they had also received two classrooms donated under the same arrangement at Serameng Primary School in Metsimotlhabe in October 2016 and said at that time the school had a deficit of four classrooms and that helped to address classroom shortage at the school.

Mr Sibisibi said the district had also benefitted from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) through deployment of staff to assist in driving the council’s agenda. ends