11 Dec 2013

Local Enterprise Authority (LEA)  interacted with different media houses on December 10,where the organisation gave an update on its operations.

Speaking at the breakfast meeting, LEA CEO Dr Tebogo Matome said the media played a major role in disseminating information about his organisation adding the local media has not been biased in its reporting. He said the media has been able to give researched reports.

Dr Matome meanwhile said his organisation came up with four sub-sectors of piggery, horticulture, leather and dairy following extensive research. He explained that they decided to concentrate on these sub-sectors after realising that majority of their clients, 51 per cent, were from the agriculture sub-sector.

The CEO said they saw opportunities existed in these sub-sectors due to the huge import bill. “This was informed by the fact that the majority of our clients were in the agriculture sector and the high import bill of these sub-sectors’ products, thus indicating the numerous opportunities that continue to exist in these sub-sectors,” he said.

These sub-sectors are now priorities in the Economic Diversification Drive (EDD) by the ministry of Trade and Industry. “Our belief then was that by focusing on the development of these few sub-sectors such will result in more meaningful and impactful results,” he said.

He said in the last financial year they advocated for the development of strategic projects, in the form of the Leather Park, Leupane Dairy Cluster and the Rapid Incubation models. “These projects are meant to ensure a sustainable and holistic development of the different sectors for the economy,” he said.

Dr Matome further said the Leather Park is meant to stimulate the growth of leather industries, whilst the rapid incubators will provide short term technical training to potential recipients of inter-alia, the youth grant scheme. “The Leupane dairy cluster if successfully implemented will not only reverse the trend, but also drastically reduce the milk and milk products import bill in the long term, as well as offer a milk production model which can be replicated across the country,” he said.

He said through the assistance of the Vice President and Trade and Industry minister, the Leather Park has been included in the National Development Plan (NDP) 10.

He said they continue to create partnerships to assist them in effectively fulfilling their strategies and this year they embarked on a number of projects aimed at targeting various aspects of entrepreneurial development. “One of these is that of the Entrepreneurship Awareness Workshops, implemented in partnership with the ministry of Education and Skills Development. Over the last year we have trained a total of 19,266 students of both senior schools and vocational institutions,” he said.

Dr Matome said they recently entered into a partnership with Kelley School of Business of Indiana University, of USA to assist local SMME’s with advanced mentoring interventions. He said LEA has partnerships with MilkAfric and the Institute of Development Management (IDM). “The partnership with MilkAfric is to collaborate on the growth of the dairy industry in Botswana, through empowerment of young dairy entrepreneurs,” he said.

On the other hand, the partnership with IDM is to capacitate LEA clients on various disciplines of business management, with IDM students benefiting through attachment with SMMEs. Talking about corporate social responsibility, he said they have adopted Mpiti primary school in Central district under the ministry of Education and Skills Development Adopt a School initiative.ENDS