08 Sep 2019

The World Economic Forum (WEF) summit in South Africa provided African leaders with an opportunity to share challenges and engage on issues that affect the continent, President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi has said.

Speaking in an interview at the 28th WEF on Africa last week, he said the forum also presented a platform to engage in an atmosphere that allowed them to ameliorate and lessen the burden of all leaders.

 “We have common burdens of deep inequality, lack of jobs for our people and fractured education systems that do not meet demands of the emerging economy as dictated by the rest of the world,” he said.

In this regard, he said, there was need to change the manner in which things were done to be more adaptive to the real times; be it in methodologies or systems in place to shorten the processes of doing things.

He further said WEF presented an opportunity for Botswana to promote itself and advance aims of growing the economy.

Thus, he said, it was important for the transformation team to lead in engaging the civil society, private sector and youth to adjust the country’s planning to fit into framework that would yield the outcomes of long term Vision 2036 against other international frameworks of AU’s Agenda 2063 and Sustainable Development Goals.

He said if the country could increase manufacturing capacity, create firms that innovate and provide solutions to world problems, problems of unemployment, income gaps and disparities and social cohesion would be resolved.

President Masisi said his wishes were that all households be connected to the internet.

He stated that ICT influenced employment both as an industry that created jobs and empowered workers to access new forms of work in a more flexible way.

 “I want internet connectivity in every household, business places and to extend connectivity even to ploughing fields and cattle posts and let Botswana be a web for inclusivity,” he said.

In this regard, he said there were few things, which needed to be tinkered that included affordability of data in order for all households and businesses to be connected.

On other issues, he raised concern over productivity levels, which he said remained a challenge that hindered Botswana’s competitiveness in a country endowed with an educated population.

He said implementation of projects was sometimes fractured and delayed progress, but noted that at times there was sheer incompetence of employees not doing things properly. ENDS