11 Mar 2021

The saying ‘dynamite comes in small packages’ resonates well with one of Botswana’s finest sports administrators, Game Mothibi. 

As the world continues to honour women who have left indelible marks in their area, Mothibi fits well in the Botswana space. 

Mothibi is a seasoned sports administrator and leader with over 15 years of experience working for national and international sporting organisations in Botswana and worldwide.

She serves as an executive member of the International Working Group on Women and Sport (IWG) for 2018-2022 and as chairperson for Africa Sport Venture Group (ASVG). 

The ASVG is a profit limited liability sport solutions and services and business corporation, which is currently running Africa Music Challenge, Africa Warrior Challenge and planning to host Africa Football Cup, among other projects.

Mothibi said she had acquired valuable experience in corporate governance through serving as a board member of the (IWG), Botswana National Olympic Committee (BNOC) and board chairperson of Africa Sport Venture Group. 

Her contributions to the current board, she said, aimed at steering the organisations towards a sustainable future by adopting inclusive, ethical and legal governance principles.

A former secretary general of the (IWG) for quadrennial 2014-2018, she also led a productive and result oriented IWG secretariat, which culminated in the successful 7^th IWG World Conference held in Gaborone in May 2018 and was attended by 1 200 participants, the highest number of participants for IWG World conferences.

IWG, which is the world’s largest network dedicated to empowering women and girls, is aligned to the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. 

Mothibi is a renowned women and sport and children’s rights activist.

Through her leadership skills she promoted women and sport and ‘sport for all in line with world policies and declarations and procedures, and signed international and national organisations to the IWG’s Brighton Plus Helsinki Declaration.

She co-founded Women Sport Africa Network and Phenomenal Africa Women Botswana chapter, in which she serves as secretary general and vice chairperson respectively. 

Having been a high school teacher and volunteered in several sport administration positions in Botswana and Africa, including being a former board member of BNSC, she acquired skills that helped her contribute to Botswana sport.

She worked for BNSC as special projects officer and was later promoted to acting sport development manager and then director. 

Mothibi said she left BNSC in 2019 to partake in the 5^th batch of the Tsukuba International Academy of Sport (TIAS), a Tokyo 2020 legacy programme sponsored by Sport for Tomorrow. 

As a sports administrator, leader and management coach, Mothibi is recognised as one of Botswana’s experienced leadership professionals who has been involved in coaching hundreds of leaders across different sectors to leverage their leadership skills to maximise performance. She is a trained facilitator for Women Sport Leadership Academy (WSLA) and Females Achieving Brilliance (FAB).

Mothibi has partnered with an online newspaper, SPOTKICK to write articles on issues affecting women in sport in Botswana, identifying gaps and barriers to women participating in sport and offering possible solutions.

She is also the Commonwealth expert group member who worked on Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on sport for development. The sport for development educational course is now found on future learn platform.

She is a founding member of both women and table tennis as well as women cricket in Botswana. Women and table tennis influenced equal prize money for men and women. 

Cricket Botswana has teams of women competing internationally since the introduction of women to cricket initiated by Mothibi.

Mothibi also introduced Women Sport Leadership Academy (WSLA) in Africa. WSLA is Anita White Foundation’s brainchild, and Mothibi initiated the training to be held in Africa. 

According to Mothibi, the training was held in Botswana for the first time in 2018 during the IWG World Conference and attracted 50 trainees, mostly from Africa. 

She said Botswana had more than 30 women in sport trained through WSLA, adding that through her influence, Botswana has two WSLA facilitators who now deliver WSLA trainings, Tsoseletso Magang and herself.

In 2015-2017, she was part of the task team that revised the UNESCO Charter on Sport, Physical Education and Physical Activity and later became a UNESCO CIGEPS committee member representing international women and sport movements.

In Botswana, Mothibi introduced MEMPROW, a mentorship programme originally from Uganda for young girls aged between 13-19 years. 

The young girls benefitted in life and presentation skills, career guidance and safeguarding in sport. She also initiated a partnership between the Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Sport and Culture Development and the Commonwealth secretariat to support gender mainstream into sport in Botswana which helped formulate gender and sport strategy, which Women and Sport Botswana (WASBO) implemented by engaging national sport associations.ends