13 Feb 2022

A local property developer, tasked with building a 12 000 square metre super mall in Jwaneng, on Thursday held a meet and greet session with stakeholders ahead of moving on site.

Construction of the mall, which the contractor indicated was already at 80 per cent occupancy, is expected to start in April and will take 12 months to complete.

Giving the project overview, MSDM Group’s chief executive officer, Mr Lekgotla Sanoto said they were still awaiting feedback from more potential tenants, mostly from South Africa, and that they foresee a need for more land to expansion in future.

Mr Sanoto said the meet and greet session was vital that they met all the stakeholders in town and establish working relations before they moved into site so that by the time they start work, they would know whom to liaise with when they need assistance.

“From our experience, we have noted that knowing stakeholders makes a job easier and fast because you know whom to quickly contact when you need assistance. This is helpful in that in the business world, time is vital and any time lost could be an opportunity lost,” he said.

Mr Sanoto said their plan was to come on site as soon as the project was given the green light. He said that the project was mooted in 2020 during the lockdown period, and that they agreed to build in Jwaneng because they were alive to the potential of the town to accommodate infrastructure of such a magnitude.

“Our journey was made much smooth by the fact that stakeholders such as the ministry of lands as well as the council authorities were helpful in ensuring we get land.

So we are indebted to them. All along, Jwaneng had been on the radar of the MSDM Group as most of its founders had previously worked around the area,” he said.

Mr Sanoto also made the commitment to source labour and equipment  locally.

Project architect, Mr Anthony Sekgweng said it was commendable that Batswana were finally starting to appreciate the value of properties.

He however indicated that it was still tough to penetrate the commercial property sector because of established groups, adding that it was thus advisable to partner with established developers.

He said Jwaneng had a good market as it was along the Trans Kalahari Highway and it was centrally located.

“It has since been proven that transit towns like Jwaneng, Mahalapye and Palapye have business potential just like cities. The project will hopefully be the start of more investors to come who did not initially see the potential,” he said.

Mr Sekgweng said they had proposed for the mall to have an internal corridor looking at the fact that Jwaneng was a busy mining town and could have a lot of dust from machinery moving around.

For her part, Jwaneng mayor, Ms Olga Ditsie said that the mall would come in handy in the town’s post-mine era plans. “The project is actually long overdue.

 During the lockdown period people used to congest and wait a long time in queues for a chance to get into shops, and that is when it became apparent that the town really needed a mall,” she said.

Ms Ditsie also said that the mall would save people long travels to access shops at places like Lobatse, Gaborone and Kanye, which she said increased road accidents.

She also pleaded with the company to be part of the town’s community and engage in corporate social responsibility and support the informal sector.

Ms Ditsie also raised an issue about businesses that had long been allocated land, but did not develop, saying such delayed the town’s growth.

In her welcome remarks, Kgosi Maleswane Bakwena said it was good that the wishes of the Jwaneng community had been answered early as they had been advocating for a shopping mall in the recent submissions for NDP 12 proposals. ENDs