27 Nov 2022

The voice of the youth matters more than it has ever done because they carry the country’s hope for the future.

Acting president, Mr Slumber Tsogwane said this at the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP)’s national youth policy forum in Serowe on Friday.

Mr Tsogwane said being Botswana’s torchbearers going into the future, the youth should have unwavering faith in their own capability to steer the country forward.

As such, Mr Tsogwane, who is also the BDP chairperson, urged the party youth to step up to the plate and cement their position as change agents on whom the direction of the country’s future was anchored.

He said the youth should constantly look within for solutions to the problems that they and the rest of the citizenry were faced with and indicated how such self-introspection would awaken them to the true extent of the potential that they carried within.

As an example, he said the upward swing that unemployment had adopted over the past couple of years was one area that ought not to have dampened the spirits of Botswana’s youths, but rather that the situation should have stirred in them a spirit of entrepreneurship so that they could create the much-needed jobs for themselves and other fellow citizens.

“The era we are in calls for mindset change. It is time that we moved away from looking up to government for employment and shifted our focus to us doing our bit in creating jobs for ourselves and fellow citizens,” he said, challenging the youth to blossom into real change agents who would proffer solutions in response to situations at hand.

Such awakening, Mr Tsogwane said, would be in sync with government’s drive to counter the rising unemployment through raising a crop of young entrepreneurs who would revolutionise the country’s job creation space.

“This is the reason why government is investing heavily in education and in youth empowerment initiatives. It is the reason why we have put a lot of focus on issues of digitisation which are in tune with the general direction that the lives of the youth will take going forward,” he said.

On ascension to leadership roles, he said the party youth should prove their mettle that they were more than ready to take the baton from the current leadership and steer the BDP and the country into the future.

Cautioning against indiscipline in the party, Mr Tsogwane called on the youthful members to aspire to make a name for themselves through maintaining flawless conduct, which would in turn make the BDP attractive to the rest of the country’s youth.

On other issues, he said the Reset Agenda, which he described as a transitional development plan on account of some of the ideals spelt out in it having been taken up for implementation in the course of National Development Plan (NDP) 11, was proof of government’s commitment to make good on the promises it had made to the nation through the BDP’s 2019 manifesto.

“We made promises to the nation through the BDP’s 2019 manifesto, and to deliver on those, we realised that unless we reset and come up with a transitional development plan, our dreams would remain just that.

For instance, the digitisation drive that we are now pursuing was decided and embarked upon at a time when we were still hard at work with the implementation of NDP11, and having the Reset Agenda in place became the vehicle that helped us merge this into our development journey,” Mr Tsogwane explained.

Generally, he said he was pleased that government continued to make great strides in delivering on its promises and assured the meeting that with President, Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi’s unrelenting commitment to push Botswana’s development agenda and edge it forward in efforts to attain high income status, the nation should remain optimistic of a brighter future.

Led by the National Youth Executive Committee (NYEC) chairperson, Mr Collen Mochotlhi, the two-day youth policy forum offered the BDP youth a platform to make a holistic review of policies affecting the youth within the party and in government as well as in the wider society. ENDS