19 Jun 2025

The Botswana University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (BUAN) has identified sustainable tourism development, climate resilience and wetlands management as areas it can collaborate on with the North West District Council for the benefit of Batswana in the district. 

This was said by BUAN Vice Chancellor, Professor Ketlhatlogile Mosepele when addressing a full council meeting in Maun on Wednesday.  

The Okavango Delta, he said faced unique threats from climate variability and human pressure and BUAN could co-design solutions through climate-smart agriculture, water resources modelling and community climate education. 

He further said BUAN was ready to work with the district on agro-tourism and floodplain farming, livestock management and commercialisation among others. 

Prof. Mosepele noted that the institution had developed expertise on sustainable agriculture, biodiversity conservation, climate change, renewable energy and community development. 

The institution, he said wanted to entrench agricultural development in Botswana and to edify natural resources management and were espousing the virtues of sustainable development. 

“This district is a living Mosaic of biodiversity, a fountain of indigenous traditional knowledge, and an epitome of community resilience and these unique attributes align perfectly with BUAN’s mandate,” he added.  He further said BUAN was implementing projects worth over P60 million encompassing livestock, cereal and crops development as well as biodiversity conservation, among others.

Also, he said projects such as aquaculture, elephant ecology, wild watermelon, food security and indigenous seed oils were part of their initiative to lead Botswana into the green economy.

“Because of the global significance of the delta and its importance to local communities, BUAN has been and still involved in some academic work in the district and some of these include animal health as we have done research to study the efficacy of traditional medicines to treat internal parasites on livestock in the district,” he added. 

Some of these medicinal plants, he said included Mogonono, Mokaikai, Mokgwapha le bo Palamela noting that what remained was for BUAN to isolate the active ingredients and possibly develop vaccines and other products, saying that was part of their initiative to leverage the value of the bio-economy for sustainable development. 

Prof. Mosepele further said BUAN was among other things, conducting research to analyse the nutritional and medicinal properties of selected plants in the Okavango Delta. 

“The project contributes to the institution strategic initiative to leverage the value of the green economy for sustainable development. 

Another academic work is the eco-ranger project, which aims to assist farmers in the district to sell their cattle to the Botswana Meat Commission at a premium,” he said. 

“We might be far in Gaborone for now but we have a presence here in this district and our intention is to develop roots here in Maun. 

One of our key initiatives is to bring BUAN closer to Batswana through the establishment of satellite campuses around Botswana. We have submitted an application to the Tawana Land Board to establish a campus in Maun and we hope that this will be successful. 

The vocational programmes that we are developing will be delivered from these satellite campuses around Botswana,” added Prof. Mosepele. 

Furthermore, as part of their growth and transformation strategy, he said they were currently undertaking a feasibility study to develop a School of Veterinary Medicine, citing that the United States of America Embassy had funded a Fullbright expert, who was currently in Botswana, undertaking a feasibility study for the institution. 

The institution, he said, had also engaged regional and international universities to work with them on this project noting that they had engaged the universities of Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe in the region while internationally, they engaged institutions like the University of Hokkaido in Japan, the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom and Virginia Tech in the USA. ENDS