The ongoing economic downturn has laid bare many of the structural weaknesses, not only in the management of our national economy, but also the structural defects in our social fabric as well as the unpreparedness of our flagship companies when it comes to complementing government through their corporate social responsibility programmes.
For many of Botswana’s companies the first casualty of the drop in revenue has been Corporate Social responsibility.
While many companies like Debswana, KBL Trust, and such others like Barclays Bank of Botswana and FNBB through their Foundation used to make generous donations to social causes, it has since become very clear that such donations have either stopped or have been significantly reduced.
As a result many NGOs that relied on these entities for their subsistence and operations have either collapsed or are struggling to remain afloat. The situation is made worse by the fact that since the time that Botswana was designated a middle income country, many international donor institutions and organisations have relocated from Botswana to focus their attention elsewhere. And this started long before the current economic climate.
There is no doubt that owing to the downturn, businesses generally are struggling.
The question to ask ourselves is, if strong and powerful institutions like the aforesaid companies are themselves struggling what then is the situation with the weaker members of our society, many of whom relied on these companies through the donations made to NGOs.
We cannot blame or expect Government to do everything. Which is why we believe that if properly run, NGOs have a role to play in augmenting and complementing Government.
But when the NGOs are themselves no longer able to even survive then it becomes the weakest members of our society who are by far the greatest recipients of their interventions that bear the greatest brunt of the downturn.
To its credit, Botswana Government has since the downturn done everything possible under the sun to cushion the weak and poorest, mainly by coming up with such interventions as such as Ipelegeng.
It must however be pointed out that such schemes are not sustainable in the long term.
They are a stop gap, premised on the belief that the downturn would not be forever. Reality though has been disappointing.
Recovery has taken too long to come, and when it did it was too fragile to allow any long-term fiscal accumulation on the part of the Government.
The fact that almost all companies were quick to either cut or in some cases do away with budget for their Corporate Social Responsibility is enough evidence that for many of these companies such responsibilities were never viewed as part of their operations.
For many companies CSR is a kneejerk reaction to attract public attention or some such public relations theatric. This is also shown by just how short term many of the CSR programmes are for some of the donating companies.
We call on companies to make CSR programmes integral components of overall strategies and operations. It is only when CSR programmes are made integral to their overall strategy that  companies will be able to make donations even during the hardest of times as is the case today, when their donations are most needed by the most vulnerable members of society.
