21 Mar 2021

Minister of Youth Empowerment, Sport and Culture Development, Tumiso Rakgare, says partnerships contribute to economic diversification.

Speaking during official launch of the united for BW sport campaign, Rakgare said the partnership between All Kasi and Botswana National Olympic Committee (BNOC) was a welcome development.

Sports contributed to the economy of Botswana, hence the need to support local brands, he said.

He pointed out that the presence of Botswana Investment and Trade Centre (BITC) during the launch resonated well with the PushaBW campaigns.

“The United for BW Sport campaign is a notable initiative, which sees the BNOC, Botswana National Sports Commission (BNSC) and (BITC), together with All Kasi and JB partner to generate funds to support Botswana sport”, he said.

Most businesses if not all, Rakgare said, had been affected by COVID-19 over a year but that had not deterred All Kasi from their vision of ensuring that the team heading for the Tokyo Olympic Games got the necessary support.

He further said athletes and technical officials had demonstrated high levels of resilience to overcome the effects of COVID-19 to qualify for the Olympics.

“I would like to take this opportunity to pledge government support for the men and women who continue to contribute immensely to the development of sport,” he said.

Furthermore, the minister described sport as a unifying factor and urged athletes to continue to achieve that by flying the Botswana flag high with pride.

“So far, five athletes have qualified for Tokyo 2020 and four of them are women.  We intend to have 10 more athletes with a target of two medals at the Olympics,” he said.

On his part, BNSC chairperson Marumo Morule, has said the ingenuity of All Kasi could not go unnoticed, adding that sport was in dire need of support.

The cost of doing sport, said Morule, had grown exponentially in the few months, resulting in regular streams funding effectively running dry.

He further said although Batswana still expected medals from Tokyo, sport still faced other challenges.

Morule noted that the trailblazing initiative would be the wind that stirs up the fire in support of sport.

He said without the support of JB, the campaign would be a daunting task.

Meanwhile, BITC director of corporate affairs, Kutlo Moagi stated that their partnership with BNOC had been fruitful through marketing and events delivering capacity-building initiatives.

She further said they were tasked to engage in attracting investments in sports mainly to do with sports development.

Moagi highlighted that the launch of the united for BW sport campaign was fully aligned to their visions and mandate of making the sport face of Botswana a success.

In addition, Moagi noted that sport made their task easy since they would forever enjoy partnering with sporting fraternity for a better Botswana.

She urged Batswana to support the initiative by buying the replica.ENDS