08 Jul 2021

Botswana has expressed concern about the type of global solidarity that has manifested in vaccine and other  requisite health infrastructure access mismatch.

The concern was expressed by President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi in a meeting with Commonwealth secretary general Ms Patricia Scotland at Office of the President yesterday.

Dr Masisi said he was “deeply worried” that developing countries  had less access to necessary instruments for dealing with the COVID-19 global crisis despite equality of the human race being expressed in multilateral fora.

It was time the international community worked on defining multilateralism in the face of global pandemics, he stated.

On other matters, Dr Masisi expressed the country’s continued commitment to being a positive player in the international community.

He said Botswana carried values of good governance, democracy, peace and commitment to development practices into international platforms.

Sharing such ethos was important given conflicts that periodically arose in different parts of the world, he said.

President Masisi informed his guests that Botswana had been afforded the opportunity to share mineral extraction legal framework with other countries such as South Sudan and Mozambique. 

The President, who is SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation chairperson, also briefed the visitors on regional developments.

He said the organ was seized with addressing regional challenges  including in Mozambique and eSwatini with a view to bringing about stability. 

For her part, Ms Scotland said she was also concerned that while the COVID-19 pandemic had “led to humanity facing the same storm, the solutions had not placed all countries in the same boat”.

She said the Commonwealth was working on improving advocacy of countries with small populations such as Botswana since they faced the peculiar challenge of being susceptible to global shocks and needed to have their resilience strengthened.

Even those small states with middle or high income economies were disproportionately affected by climate change, COVID-19 and other challenges therefore their perseverance capacity needed strengthening, she said.

Ms Scotland said the Commonwealth also stressed the need for youth empowerment policy formulation and development initiatives.BOPA