14 Nov 2021

Leader of Opposition and Maun West MP Mr Dumelang Saleshando has decried unemployment and what he termed ‘sluggish pace of job creation efforts by government’. He was responding to President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi’s Stateof-the-Nation Address (SONA) delivered on Monday.

Mr Saleshando said joblessness was becoming more pronounced with each passing year, plunging many young people into a state of despondency. He said government should adopt a multi-pronged strategy to arrest the situation. Among them, the Leader of Opposition suggested increasing funding for parastatals that had potential to create employment. Mr Saleshando said despite the potential to create jobs, some parastatals lacked ambition to contribute to employment creation.

“It’s always a pain to see at least three landings by South African airlines almost daily compared to a single landing by Air Botswana in Maun. The Maun and Kasane destinations have clearly created more jobs in South Africa than in Botswana. Pilots, air hostesses, travel agents and other service providers for airlines are profiting out of travel to Botswana while our citizens have nothing to show for it,” he said.

Mr Saleshando contrasted the Air Botswana situation with that of Ethiopian Airways, saying despite Ethiopia having previously been Africa’s classical example of unmitigated poverty, the country had set up the airline with a clear objective of proving that it was as capable as any other country to compete with the best. He said today the airline boasted a turnover in excess of US$4.2 billion, and had employed 14 000 people as at 2017.

Mr Saleshando said government should also leverage the massive potential of green energy and not swim against the tide by promoting coal mining while the rest of the globe was moving towards harnessing the power of green energy. “With 60 per cent of the national electricity demand met from domestic generation, there is a big opportunity for Botswana to embrace solar in a more ambitious way. Botswana is located geographically in a region that has the highest irradiance,” he stated.

He said with the country enjoying approximately 10 hours of sunshine in winter and 12 in summer, Botswana could be Africa’s model solar energy generator. “We need to aim to be amongst the best in the world on solar power exploitation to get the jobs we need,” he said. Mr Saleshando stated further that Botswana should also be preparing to enter the space of synthetic diamonds as the mining of natural diamonds would inevitably draw to a close. He said while Botswana has a good story to tell when it comes to the exploitation of diamonds for development, the country needed to be alive to the reality of the imminent extinction of natural diamonds.

Manufacturing of synthetic diamonds, he said, would add to job creation. Mr Saleshando also described infrastructure modernisation, in particular construction, as a low hanging fruit in terms of job creation. He called for renovation of the country’s major roads, as that would aid in employment creation. “Roads are a long-term investment and pay back through increased trade, efficient movement of goods and services and lower costs of doing business,” he noted.

Further to what else should be done to create jobs, Mr Saleshando said government should commit mining companies to process minerals locally and thereby ensure that jobs were not exported. He also said Botswana needed to change its approach to funding local entrepreneurs. Citing the Youth Development Fund (YDF), he said the idea that funding should be allocated equally to all constituencies on an annual basis defied logic. He said instead, beneficiaries who had managed to grow their businesses and had employed others, should be identified and offered additional funding to enable them to create more jobs.

This should be adopted across board to enhance job creation capabilities of beneficiaries funded through different initiatives and agencies, he said. Mr Saleshando said government should prioritise supporting already-existing businesses in the face of elusive foreign direct investment (FDI). He said government should also explore the potential of the education sector to create new jobs by facilitating the establishment of pre-primary schools and sponsoring learners at the said institutions with a view to addressing poor academic results.

On regional matters, Mr Saleshando said Botswana, together with the rest of the SADC, needed to address the crisis in eSwatini as a matter of urgency. He said the blatant suppression of pro-democracy campaigners could not be tolerated in this era. ends