Govt commits to resourcing military resources
07 Dec 2024
President Advocate Duma Boko has reaffirmed government’s commitment to avail resources to fund the requisite levels of defence readiness and modernisation.
Speaking at the graduation ceremony for Defence Command and Staff College Class 16 of 2024, President Boko urged the graduates to be cognisant of the fact that they were graduating at a time when the country was facing acute economic challenges hence the need to ensure prudent resource utilisation.
“We also expect you to find innovative and creative ways of doing more with less, so we remain efficient and effective in our service delivery to Batswana, until such time that the economy recovers,” President Boko said.
While working with a relatively flat budget, President Boko indicated that he was encouraged by the BDF’s recent exploits in Mozambique where they were deployed as part of the SADC mission to fight terrorism and restore law and order.
“I can confidently attribute the high level of competence to the training and discipline instilled through programmes such as the one you are graduating from,”he said.
He said the BDF’s successes in Mozambique followed a pattern from the early 90s when the BDF was deployed in Somalia and several other parts of the African continent for peacekeeping missions adding that such success was testimony to the professional conduct and commitment to duty by the military personnel.
Additionally President Boko said to ensure further success, it was essential for the BDF to collaborate with national universities on research and development in the defence sector.
This, he said required dedicating time and effort to anticipating the defence force's education and training needs and strategically planning to address these complex requirements.
President Boko thus highlighted the need for the BDF to invest heavily in both material and human resource development owing to today’s rapidly evolving and volatile world,characterised by complex and ambiguous threats to national security, as evidenced by wars and new technologies employed in Ukraine and many other parts of the world.
In this regard, he said the collaboration with the University of Botswana presented a valuable opportunity for the BDF and the tertiary institutions to achieve this goal.
“ One of the pivotal insights to acknowledge is that, a thorough understanding of national security, national defence and international relations, provides a crucial foundation for military professionals to grasp the strategic context within which military operations occur,” he said.
He similarly said collaboration with mentor universities, combined with the accreditation of military learning programmes, provided the BDF with a unique opportunity to reflect on its past successes as an organisation while looking ahead to identify opportunities for advancing personnel capability development through education and training.
ENDS
Source : BOPA
Author : Thato Mosinyi
Location : Gaborone
Event : Graduation ceremony
Date : 07 Dec 2024
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