11 Jul 2024

Civil Aviation Authority Botswana (CAAB) conducted a workshop geared towards capacitating businesses on its mandate and procurement opportunities available in its scope of delivery. 

The workshop, which was held on July 10 in Gaborone, further highlighted successes attained by CAAB since inception to date, including its five-year strategic plan leading to 2029. 

Speaking at the workshop, CAAB Chief Executive Officer, Dr Bao Mosinyi, said their mandate was mainly to serve as regulators within the aviation space, including running airport and providing air navigation services. 

Based on the latter, Dr Mosinyi reiterated that they mostly sought support from the business fraternity in running airports and providing air navigation services. 

He said the Civil Aviation Act gave them authority to run every aspect of aviation on behalf of the government in line with the State Safety Programme (SSP), a management system for the regulation and administration of safety by the state or country. 

Dr Mosinyi said the system was uniquely developed for each country in order to achieve an acceptable level of safety for its civil aviation system. 

For this reason, he said through the authority vested upon them by the Minister of Transport and Public Works, they also oversee both the Botswana Defence Force and Botswana Police Service air wings. 

He said as part of their recent successes, the minister signed and promulgated the Drones Regulations, which currently find them tasked with capaciting the general public on this new development. 

Dr Mosinyi said before, they were regulating drones through a set of guidelines, which were not sufficient, adding that efforts were underway to regulate their manufacturers as well. 

On safety compliance criteria, he said lately CAAB closed Palapye, Seronga and Nata airstrips owing to their lack of adherence to set standards. 

Dr Mosinyi said currently, CAAB runs 23 strategic airfields mostly for VVIP movements, security agencies and medical evacuations. 

However, he said to date both Ghanzi and Selebi Phikwe have been put on halt for reasons emanating from non-compliance to set standards. 

Dr Mosinyi said the maintenance and upkeep of these facilities was quite expensive, hence some of them were closed, adding that with the 2022 Land Board regulations, CAAB paid roughly P24m a year on land rates for all its strategic airfields. 

He said for their recent five-year strategic plan, they endeavour to achieve their set objectives, which included, meeting firm compliance to International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) regulations, safety oversight and security audits. 

He said over the years and through these audits, Botswana has moved from 24 per cent on effective implementation scores to 61 per cent on revenue recovery and compliance in 2022, surpassing 57 per cent African average. 

Dr Mosinyi said currently they had attained 85.68 per cent after being audited on eight sets of criteria ranging from compliance to international safety and security standards. 

Meanwhile, CAAB Head of Public Affairs, Mr Modipe Nkwe, said through the workshop they intended to capacitate and share skills needed in their line of service with the business fraternity. 

Mr Nkwe said for most services procured, CAAB has always relied on foreign companies to assist with their expertise. 

However, he said they hoped to change this through capacitating local businesses to take part as well. 

He said now they accept unsolicited bids from local companies and they hope to see businesses proposing strategic interventions, which will help them in actively attaining their full mandate as a company. 

Mr Nkwe said it would be pleasing in future to see local businesses forging strategic ties with international counterparts toward meeting CAAB halfway in delivering on its mandate. 

He said with proposed developments for some of their airport such as Maun, it was in their best interests to see local companies coming forth to propose advanced technologies to help support their functions in running the airport. Ends