If you asked many of our compatriots who roam the streets – some of whom are university graduates – about their needs, the first thing that comes off their mouth is a job. We also know that the national unemployment rate among the youth is chronically high at over 30 %.
The seriousness of these figures is plain enough and needs no further elaboration. If anything, it points policy making towards a laser-like focus on job creation. The extent to which we do that is not as self-evident because we seem to be lost in the weeds. This is caused by that fact that we are engaged in a zero sum game which somehow reduces citizen empowerment to ownership of business and nothing more. People working in non-citizen owned firms do not count as citizen economic empowerment according to this logic. This is unsound because for the majority of people in Botswana, a job is how they get economically empowered.
With that in mind, it is imperative to look at economic empowerment as a notion which goes beyond targeting a few citizens for contracts by either the state or its myriad parastatals. We must start to appreciate that non-citizens too, through the businesses that they run, play a major role in citizen economic empowerment. The danger of a zero sum approach on the other hand, is that it blinds us into thinking that non-citizen owned firms prosper at the expense of citizen owned ones. With that thinking, we also miss the fact that economic growth is the tide that lifts all boats. With economic growth, job prospects for the unemployed improve.
For us to reach high levels of economic growth -estimated by experts at 6% annually- we need all sectors to run at full throttle, with both foreign and local investors allowed to play their full role. Obviously this calls for more and not less foreign direct investment.
I do not doubt that those handing out contracts to citizen firms have their hearts in the right place. Of course, I understand that a country such as ours must be allowed to enjoy its sovereignty. However, we should be mindful that there are limitations to a policy that seeks to favour locals over foreigners. Other countries also have sovereignty and may retaliate and for a small economy such as ours that would be damaging. We saw reality hit South African Airways when it applied to extend its footprint in the US but were seemingly oblivious that their government had previously denied a US carrier a reciprocal request to connect Cape Town to the their Johannesburg route . South Africa had to climb and that was sensible. If by expanding to Cape Town the US airline creates jobs in South Africa in the process, that should be accepted as South African citizen economic empowerment. Job creation should be recognized as the most important and overriding metric of empowerment.
So firms which are not wholly citizen owned but employ and train locals should be supported as natural partners in citizen economic empowerment. They should not be treated as if they are less patriotic. We should not make the absurd claim of denying them fuel business for example because of security of supplies concerns as if a state owned enterprise would do any better. Moreover there should be no attempt to vilify non-citizen owned companies or even blame them for youth unemployment.
There should be no cynical use of some UN reports on inequality to scare successful business owners of an impending revolution by poor people. That is a favourite play book of Marxists and we know how wrong and murderous that ideology has been over the last century.
