The government and some of its officers don’t seem to be quite on the same wavelength with regard to what the Selebi Phikwe Economic Diversification Unit (SPEDU) should be doing.
Speaking at the National Stakeholders Conference for Mid-Term Review of National Development Plan 10/District Development Plan 7/Urban Development Plan 3 held in Gaborone last week, Lopang Pule from the Central District Council, said that there was a great deal of scepticism among relevant stakeholders about the role of SPEDU. While they had initially thought that it would tackle developmental challenges in its area of jurisdiction, it was not being as proactive as they had hoped.
“The SPEDU people are saying that they are facilitators and when you facilitate, people come to you, instead of you going to them. SPEDU is playing a BEDIA-like role,” Pule said, referring to the Botswana Export Development and Investment Agency, now part of the merger with former IFSC.
In response to this concern, Keeneetse Lepekoane, Acting Secretary for Development Programmes in the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, confirmed that SPEDU was indeed a facilitator established to play a BEDIA-like role.
“SPEDU has no capacity to implement,” she said, adding later that the Selebi Phikwe Town Council has to shoulder such responsibility.
Dr. Taufila Nyamadzabo, Secretary for Economic and Financial Policy at MFDP, reiterated that SPEDU was in effect “BEDIA at a regional level” mandated to ensure that there was progress on the ground.
The ministry’s position notwithstanding, many more people besides Pule feel that SPEDU has not brought the sort of progress they had hoped to see. Councillors in the SPTC ritualistically attack SPEDU for not doing enough to diversify the economy of a town that faces a very bleak future when its copper ore is mined out not too long from now.
Established in 2008 under MFDP, SPEDU was this year April transferred to the Ministry of Trade and Industry. In a statement released at the time of the transfer, the latter said that “the mandate of SPEDU is fully aligned to that of the Ministry of Trade and Industry in the sense that the ministry facilitates investment promotion, business development and coordinates economic diversification efforts.”
Speaking at the Stakeholders Conference, MTI’s deputy permanent secretary, Boniface Mphehle, said that following its transfer, SPEDU has since been incorporated as a company. The reason for this, he explained, was to have it operate semi-autonomously outside cumbersome government processes. Mphehle added that the ministry wants to align SPEDU with the ministry’s economic diversification drive (EDD) mandate.
Last year, the European Union and the Botswana government signed a memorandum of understanding for the use of some P640 million to foster economic diversification in the region of Selebi Phikwe. Among priority projects identified for funding are the Selebi Phikwe Technical College, the Botswana Mining Museum and Research Centre, an acid capture plant, tourism infrastructure at Letsibogo Dam as well as a packaging house and processing plant for horticultural produce.
