12 Sep 2022

Women in business have been urged to group themselves and produce quality products that are competitive and ready for international markets.

Botswana Investment Trade Centre (BITC) export and promotion manager, Ms Itumeleng Teseletso said this during an engagement meeting organised by Women in Business Botswana (WIBA) on Saturday to appreciate their products and see how best they could assist them to explore lucrative markets.

She challenged women to upscale their standard in terms of production, branding, packaging, record keeping and certification as they were competing with their counterparts from other countries.

The international markets, she said had requirements hence they should try by all means to satisfy them. Ms Teseletso said it was critical to follow the required standards even if they were using indigenous knowledge.

She appraised them on various services and investment opportunities that BITC offered, among them the Export Development Programme (EDP) which provided an opportunity for companies to achieve their market expansion objectives.

The programme provides a platform to ensure participating companies were given support to enhance their export competitiveness as well as increase exports of products and services that added domestic value and contributed to the diversification of the economy. Ms Teseletso also noted that it was important to capacitate themselves locally before exploring the outside market, adding that BITC assisted with capacity building to ensure entrepreneurs produced quality products.

“Before trying the international market, you need to taste the local market because that will assist you to perfect yourselves in terms of quantity, production and eventually become export ready,” she added. The gathering was also informed about the fairs, exhibitions, benchmarking trips and inward buyer mission whereby BITC invited, through USAID, potential people from outside to come and appreciate a specific product.

BITC, she said could also assist business people bringing experts to drill them on entrepreneurship and also appointed foreign trade representatives to market their products, adding however that it required that enrolled in the EDP in order to enjoy the services.

Business service manager, Mr Kebaswele Kebaswele from BITC encouraged women to fully utilise their services to grow and expand their market base. He urged them to formalise and standardise their products and further leverage on the existing value chain tourism.

Currently, he said BITC was focusing on domestic market through placement of craft products in safari campsites and urged them to come on board so that they could be introduced to safari companies.

Mr Kebaswele said there were more opportunities in the tourism industry, adding currently the clientele was more into experimental tourism whereby they wanted to know the history of the locally made products and advised entrepreneurs to tell a story in their branding.

He also urged them to take advantage of the ‘PushaBW’ initiative which aimed to take local products to retail outlets shelves. “We work with retail outlets to reserve a space to display locally manufactured products and I urge all who want to explore the PushaBW ecosystem to come forth,” he added.

WIBA president, Ms Nametso Ntsosa-Carr encouraged women to up their game in order to take their businesses to greater heights. She decried that some businesses were growing at a slow pace and challenged owners to reset their minds and explore many available opportunities in their surroundings to improve their businesses and livelihoods.

She indicated that Maun was a tourism destination with many opportunities they could tap into. Ms Ntsosa-Carr also urged them to consider venturing into the male dominated businesses such as construction and truck transport.

She thanked BITC for playing a critical role in driving the country’s economic growth through domestic investment and expansion. She also appreciated the organisation’s committed to creating business linkages.

“Before COVID-19, BITC took some of our members to China. It is doing an excellent job in promoting locally manufactured goods to local, regional and international markets,” she added.

Meanwhile, one of the entrepreneurs, Ms Francinah Ngele, who is in the textile industry revealed that her business needed expensive specialised machines to increase production. She noted that she was willing to grow and operate at a large scale, but financial institutions spurned her efforts to get funding. Ms Gaerolwe Kashe, who specialises in manufacturing of atchar and jam using morula fruits concurred that financial access was a stumbling block for the growth of their businesses.

She explained that she started with little capital, but now it was difficult to graduate to large scale because that required more capital. Her products, she said required specialised machines and equipment, which she could not afford.

To establish a large scale production unit, Ms Kashe said needed a fully automatic production unit, comprising of cap sealing and bottle washing machines, grinder, mixer and specialised pots among others.

In an effort to grow her business, she said she once applied for Gender Affairs programme but she was not successful.

Meanwhile, the engagement meeting brought together officials from Botswana Investment Trade Centre (BITC) and WIBA to apprise women in business on opportunities they could utilise to grow.

Ms Wamana Kenosi said some government departments were contributing to the problem at hand as they used bureaucracy to frustrate their efforts. At times, she said they came up with brilliant ideas to grow their businesses bust some officers failed them and that “demoralise most of us to move forward and grow bigger”. BOPA