10 Feb 2020

Councillor for Chobe Enclave East, Mr Chimini Mololwane has implored Mabele women in the Chobe District to explore the newly assembled women digital centre for the betterment of their lives.

The centre, dubbed Mme Thari, literally means that women are nurtures and pillars of the nation.

The centre is a partnership between Orange Botswana Foundation and Project Concern International (PIC), situated at Mabele Primary School. 

The Mabele centre came along with 10 laptops, 30 tablets, one video projector and a screen, one printer, five power strips and 30 earphones that will facilitate training. Launching the centre on behalf of the area MP and Assistant Minister of Tertiary Education, Research, Science and Technology, Mr Machana Shamukuni on February 7, Mr Mololwane said the centre was a valuable gift from the two entities. He said the digital centre would serve as a platform for women to carry out their activities that include to process administrative work for their enterprises, share marketing strategies and how to use digital technology.

In addition, he said participants should explore how they could network with other women in other parts of the country.

Councillor Mololwane said the centre, which has been anchored within an existing savings group, Lwavvo women group, and trained by PCI through their women empowerment programme, would enable the women of Mabele and nearby areas to empower themselves and improve their lives.

He said as part of demonstrating government’s commitment to ensuring that more of such initiatives were implemented countrywide, the government was committed to ensuring that an enabling environment existed.

He said the digital revolution has changed the way people work, and that the centre offered opportunities to those who could use new technologies and present new challenges for those who were left behind.

Mr Mololwane said such was as indication that they believed in young girls and women to dream unafraid in overcoming social and economic difficulties.

 Orange Botswana director, corporate and legal affairs services, Ms Lepata Mafa-Nthomola said most studies and researches, when it came to womenfolk, always came to the same conclusion that women constituted the bulk of the most disadvantaged members of society.

She said across the globe, women and girls were disadvantaged compared to men and boys, and that most received less formal education, had fewer opportunities to work outside the household, or when they did, they were often paid less and treated less than males.

Ms Mafa-Nthomola further stated that for rural women, the situation was worse because most women usually lived with norms that defined them primary as wives and mothers, confined to the domestic sphere and nothing more. “This is in addition to the burden of patriarchy, gender based violence, poverty and limited freedom of expression.

She explained that the empowerment of women and the empowerment of women socio-economic status was important and should pre-occupy all those who had the means to assist to achieve this.

She said the opening and launching of the Mabele women centre meant a lot to the women in the village and surrounding areas.

Ms Mafa-Nthomola said apart from the centre being focused on empowering women in order to feed their families, it was also geared at fulfilling the dreams and ambitions of the womenfolk as an individual.

“Otherwise we run the risk of creating an impression that women’s empowerment is for the sole purpose of improving everyone’s livelihoods, except for the women themselves. When we empower our women, we must not only concentrate on what their empowerment will mean to the society of their families, but also seek to intervene in a way that also takes into consideration their personal potentials, self-fulfillment, personal growth-basically and desire to become everything one is capable of becoming,” she added.

She said Orange Botswana Foundation established the digital training centres for women who came from difficult economic backgrounds, particularly the unqualified and unemployed ones.

The centres are designed to equip women with skills to enable them to either find employment or to be entrepreneurial.

Orange Botswana Foundation has similar centres in Ghanzi, Molepolole and the Mabele centre is a continuation of the journey by Orange Botswana Foundation and PIC to provide women with computer skills, basic finance skills and digital marketing through the use of information and communications technology skills. ENDS