It’s hard to believe that Boitekanelo College has only been operating since 2006, but it has grown to become a global competitor in health sciences, offering state of the art education relevant to the current market trends and needs internationally.
Boitikanelo College is a wholly citizen owned institution and is the brainchild of Dr Tiroyaone Mampane and his team who saw a gap in the market. They realised that government could not bear the sole burden through the Institutes of Health Sciences and saw a business opportunity to focus on training in the science disciplines not available at the government institutions.
The Director for Strategy and Institutional Planning Ketlogetswe Montshiwa explained to Sunday Standard that they conduct a thorough market assessment and identify what the market requires and then they train their students in those fields to ensure that they produce employable graduates.
Montshiwa went on to cite Clinical Technology as one of their rare to find courses. She explained that it is a science based course interfaced between science and medicine and gives the students the ability to operate highly specialised medicinal equipment across the medical fraternity and the ability to interpret results from these machines. Montshiwa also stated that there are only 3 universities in Africa offering this course and they are the first to offer it in Botswana.
Boitikanelo College boasts Memorandums of Understanding with local Botswana Qualification Authority, Department of Youth and Culture, Ministry of Health and on an international level with Swaziland’s Ministry of Health, Stellenbosch University in Cape Town and the University of Cape Town. The college benchmarks from these reputable organisations to further improve and advance their own programs.
Montshiwa also added that they recently added new courses, Dietetics and Nutrition and Fire Fighting and Disaster Management and they were working hand in hand with the Stellenbosch University and the University of Tshwane respectively to perfect their curriculum.
The college also boasts state of the art equipment and laboratories. The students are taught practicals and can be taken to South Africa for the more advanced courses. They also have a Memorandum of Understanding with the Council for Health Services Accreditation of Southern Africa.
Boitekanelo College has also established a relationship with the Ministry of Youth Sports and Culture to train their students for jobs at the hospital like laundry services, cleaning and waste management which require specialised skills due to the sensitivity of the hospital, its waste and how it is cleaned. The trained graduates are able to set up businesses which will provide these services to local clinics and hospitals which were otherwise outsourced from outside the country. The students are also offered short term entrepreneurial courses to ensure they run smooth sustainable business with the necessary skills.
Located in the heart of the Batlokwa capital, Tlokweng, Montshiwa explained that they intend to form strong community ties with the community they reside in. The college will conduct research within the village which will be relevant and beneficial to Tlokweng residents, a trait they picked up while benchmarking at the University Of Cape Town.
Regarding Corporate Social Responsibility, the College has embarked on a ‘Adopt a School Campaign’ and have since engaged a kindergarten School and intend to launch a more robust and aggressive campaigns in the near future.
