28 Sep 2023

The Kusi Ideas Festival ,which will be  held in Botswana in December, will bring together some of the most free-spirited and bold people to deliberate on Africa’s challenges and how to turn them into opportunities.

Briefing the media yesterday on his external trips, President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi said Botswana would co-host the festival with Nation Media Group (NMG) Africa’s second largest media corporation.

Shedding more light on the festival that is in its fifth year running, NMG Executive Director Mr Wangethi Mwangi said it celebrated ideas generated by Africans and concepts geared toward home-grown solutions.

“The festival has a keen interest in bringing ideas to solve the challenges that is Africa facing, be it at an individual, country or regional level,” he said.

Mr Mwangi said Kusi was derived from the southerly trade wind that blows over the Indian Ocean between April and mid-September and had enabled trade up north along the East African coast and between Asia and Africa for millennia.

He said it was this wind that brought the ideas across the Indian Ocean which Africans see, pick up and run with to create solutions to the crisis faced by the continent hence the name Kusi Ideas Festival.

“The first Kusi was hosted in Kigali, Rwanda and we had the participation of Rwanda President, the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the former Prime Minister of Kenya, Mr Ralia Odinga,” he said.

At the time, Mr Mwangi said, they facilitated a presidential roundtable where the party fielded questions from not just intellectuals and academics, but from Rwandese Universities students.

Mr Mwangi said the festival opened up the field of discussions for the inclusivity of men, women, academics and thought-leaders, citing that in the end, they built motions or ideas that could further be interrogated for developing solutions to Africa’s problems.

He said Botswana should brace herself for the Kusi Ideas Festival, revealing  that they were planning on putting together a presidential roundtable involving as many SADC leaders and heads of state. Ends