13 Oct 2022

This year’s Business Botswana national business conference slated for the city of Francistown is set to be a platform to showcase that Botswana has come of age in terms of the speakers that will deliberate on cross-cutting topics to spur economic recovery and growth.

Unlike in the past when foreign nationals and captains of industries dominated the proceedings, things will be different this time around as Batswana top-notch business leaders will take the lead.

Also, the session will have more women moderators than men; a deliberate move by the organisers.

The two-day conference billed for Monday and Tuesday next week at Adansonia hotel, will in line with President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi’s road map be paperless to prop up the digitization narrative.

Business Botswana’s Publicity, Marketing and Communications Officer, Ms Patience Lebotse is upbeat that the conference to be held under the theme: Roadmap to High-income; Accelerating Transformation, will live up to the expectations of the organisers.

“As highlighted by one of the topics under discussion; the Role of Leadership in driving growth, competitiveness and accelerating our journey towards Vision 2036, particularly the quest to attain high-income status there is a need for both the private sector and the government to create synergies,” she said in an interview on Wednesday.

The conference is the 16^th since inception in 1988 and will be graced and officially opened by President Masisi.

Over 400 delegates representing 22 priority sectors of the economy including retail, ICT, education, security, finance and many others are expected to attend.

The conference according to Ms Lebotse is crucial in that it accords the private sector an opportunity to interface and interrogate some of the policies and programmes created by government to create a conducive environment for the sector to thrive especially post-COVID-19.

“This platform will look at what needs to be done in terms of reforms by government and devise a recovery plan for the private sector to once again find its footing in the grand scheme of the economy,” she said expressing that the response by people from the private sector who had shown interest to be part of the Monday deliberations was inspiring.

She was optimistic that this year’s meeting would leave behind a clear-cut footprint in terms of resolutions that would be arrived at and transform Botswana’s economic landscape. ENDs