29 Nov 2022

Government considers entrepreneurship as a priority vehicle for contributing not just to employment creation, economic growth, social and political stability but also to innovativeness and competitiveness of the country.

Giving a keynote address during the entrepreneurship and SMME development symposium, Minister of Entrepreneurship, Mr Karabo Gare said entrepreneurship was an ecosystem that had been found to provide a driving force to consistent job creation and poverty reduction.

“Government identifies entrepreneurship and SMME development as a key strategy in responding to main national economic issues hence the birth of the Ministry of Entrepreneurship which was officially launched on November 11 this year, a date coinciding with the Global Entrepreneurship week,” Minister Gare said.

He stated that entrepreneurship and SMME development, remained the most viable and plausible keys to unlocking many of the global economic challenges as they were the critical drivers of job creation and accelerators of economic growth.

“According to the World Bank, SMEs account for majority of businesses worldwide were important contributors to job creation and global economic development representing about 90 per cent of businesses and more than 50 per cent of employment worldwide while formal SMEs contribute up to 40 per cent of national income (GDP) in emerging economies,” he said.

Mr Gare said the economic problems that governments world over were tasked with, included recovering from the devastating impacts of COVID-19, which resulted in all key economic development indicators going red.

The country’s economy, he said was not spared and the government was doing all it could to emerge from the miseries of the pandemic hence the Presidential Reset Agenda to drive the recovery.

“Botswana’s current biggest challenge is to achieve sustainable growth that delivers the quantity and quality of the jobs that will catapult us into a high income economy,” he said.

Minister Gare further indicated that the symposium theme Entrepreneurship development, a catalyst to the National Reset Agenda, was the most appropriate because at the core , it recognised that the economic growth and achievement of the national reset agenda had to be private sector led.

He stated that worldwide issues of critical concern across economies and supply chain required a resilient approach to achieve recovery, stability and innovativeness, further noting that it was important to regularly have a health check on the SMME ecosystem through research. ENDS