The question of whether and to what extent has the quality of life of Batswana improved over the past three years has been a recurring one. I say three years because it’s been that long since the Presidency of Mokgweetsi Masisi was ushered in.
It’s within these three years that together with the rest of the world Botswana has been learning to co-exist with the China birthed – Covid 19. While generally a bad thing, the Covid 19 pandemic came with many lessons and reminders at individual, national and global level. One of the key reminders for Botswana from Covid 19 is that we are a nation that is heavily reliant on other nations on almost everything. Covid 19 reminded us that despite singing the song for so many decades, Botswana has not been able to diversify revenue sources away from the minerals sector.
Even before the arrival of Covid 19, over time, in the global space, the foundation of industrial economies had shifted focus from “natural resources” (like diamonds) to Intellectual assets. (e.g. innovation). As such, to be competitive, as a country or nation we need to harness our people’s Intellectual capital. Instead of producing only industrial workers who produce material goods, we should also have “knowledge” workers who create immaterial products such as knowledge, communication, or even an emotional RESPONSE. Surely diversification is critical if we hope to reach the high-income status that we target by 2036 as prescribed by our national vision (2036). Like SARS or SwineFlu, Covid 19 is now becoming history. But it does so having reminded us of the need to not just diversify the economy but also to economically empower the citizens. Citizen economic empowerment is critical for any country that seeks long term success. Our national vision should be clear in terms of what we want for citizens of Botswana in this fast-moving but vulnerable world economy. To date, most countries aspire to a knowledge economy. Nations around the globe are pouring billions of monies into increasing their “knowledge intensiveness”. The Masisi administration has also on many occasions made it clear that it also has Knowledge Based Economy aspirations. One can only hope that such aspiration is not just lip service or catch phrases as seen with diversification over the years.
It is quite evident that elsewhere in the world, policy and law makers are busy harnessing intellectual assets of the citizens to reinforce resilience against protectionists policies that are now world-wide spreading. This is what we should also be doing here. While that is the case, the question is, as it stands, can our people think critically without favouring their affiliations — Or do they blindly follow their political & religious leaders? If the answer is YES, then we are set to go. If the answer is NO, then we have to, for example, find ways of getting members of the ruling party to positively contribute to the debate that says state sponsored social programmes are some of the ways of avoiding implementation of real solutions to the problems surrounding the darker world of our less privileged citizenry.
More economic hardships seem to be coming our way but we should be grateful to Covid 19 for a few kind reminders pertaining to our economic status both at national and individual levels. It was during and post Covid 19 pandemic that we see many other countries turning their citizens into ‘intellectual assets’ to play a key role as enablers of innovation and new employment opportunities for their fellow citizens. Botswana desperately needs Intellectual Assets in the form of its citizens not political liabilities. The #Bottomline is that at a time when mining – the once growth engine for our economy continues to face difficulties, there is never a better time to re-look at other options that we have. One option is to tap on our intellect capital.
