16 Feb 2022

 President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi will use his attendance of the two-day European Union-African Union (EU-AU) summit to market Botswana as well as promote its bid to host the Kimberley Process secretariat.
 Slated for February 17-18 in Brussels, Belgium, the summit is expected to attract African and European leaders.

Speaking in an interview before departure yesterday, President Masisi said he would dialogue with world leaders with a view to improve the country’s global standing.

He said the summit, expected to discuss peace and security, health, climate, trade and other issues of mutual interest, would afford him an opportunity to advance Botswana’s interests.

“We trade with the EU in diamonds, beef and we will also market small stock trade. These areas will be key to promote, as well as job creation in the area of innovation, information communications technology (ICT) as well as the field of vaccine production,” Dr Masisi said.

A series of roundtables are scheduled to take place during the summit covering areas such as agriculture and sustainable development, health systems and vaccine production, private sector support and economic integration.

President Masisi said Botswana would use the summit to continue lobbying for the hosting of Kimberley Process secretariat which unites diamond trading states, civil society and industry in promoting ethical diamond trade and reducing the flow of conflict diamonds.

“We have expressed our desire to host the Kimberley Process secretariat since we are a top diamond producer by value. As a country we have a proper trail of how we mine and sell our diamonds in an ethical manner for development purposes, a process transparent to all. We are competing with Austria to host the secretariat and we want to convince other members of the process to support our bid,” the President said.

It is anticipated that at the conclusion of the summit, the AU and EU heads of state will adopt a joint declaration committing to a renewed AU-EU partnership towards 2030 and AU Agenda 2063.

President Masisi said upon his return from Belgium he would visit Namibia for discussions with his counterpart Dr Hage Geingob on various issues of bilateral interest.

“We have many issues to discuss. There has been the recent ruling on the inquest on the Namibians who unfortunately lost their lives, and the issue we have long discussed of granting Batswana and Namibians better access to each other’s countries by using identity cards instead of passports while travelling between the two states,” President Masisi revealed.

He also said areas such as diamond, beef and small stock trade, the Walvis Bay port and improving road and rail linkages between Botswana and Namibia would form part of the discourse.

Stating that Namibia had a strong small stock sector, he described its sheep trade as particularly successful.

He said the Botswana delegation would use the visit to benchmark in order to improve Botswana’s own small stock trade.

President Masisi is accompanied by Minister of International Affairs and Cooperation Dr Lemogang Kwape, Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry Mr Mmusi Kgafela and senior government officials.ENDS