26 Sep 2019

The Assistant Minister for Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration, Mr Machana Shamukuni, says government will continue to develop initiatives to ensure project sustainability.

Officially opening stakeholder meeting on poverty eradication in Gaborone on September 24, Mr Shamukuni said the value chains were series of activities involved in making a product available to customers.

He also stated that the main aim of the value chains was to eradicate extreme poverty through sustainable income generation and employment initiatives by promoting micro and small scale entrepreneurship, as well as through capacity building and skills development.

Furthermore,  he said the value chains analysis sought to ensure that the functions of operations, logistics, supply and marketing were integrated to ensure that products and services were delivered to the satisfaction of the customer distributed in the right quantities, to the right places and at the right time.

Mr Shamukuni said government had been implementing various programmes and projects that were meant to improve lives of the poor members of our society.

He explained that the programme comprised of 45 business models, that were recently augmented by the introduction of key projects such as egg layers, cluster gardens, fisheries as well as small and medium scale machinery

In 2011, government having recognized that 19.3 per cent of the population lived in poverty and further 6.4 per cent lived in abject poverty introduced the poverty eradication programme, he said.

Mr Shamukuni noted that by 2015/16, the impact of the programmes and other interventions was already visible, as evidenced by a reduction of poverty  incidents by three percent from 19.3 per cent to 16.3 per cent while the proportion of Batswana living in abject poverty reduced by almost one percent from 6.4 per cent to 5.8 per cent.

A total of 37 002 projects had been funded to date, with 29 531 being operational and 32 500 employment opportunities having been created.

A total of 2 066 projects have failed completely for various reasons, amongst them lack of market access, high operational costs as a result of non-availability of the raw materials he said.

Mr Shamukini encouraged stakeholders to make all efforts to ensure the completeness of the value chain, which in turn would contribute to the growing economy; creation of employment and most importantly reduce poverty levels.

This would also increase the number of excelling beneficiary projects whilst reducing the number of failing projects thereby improving the livelihood of poor Batswana he said.  Ends