It has become a norm that in every crisis the phrase “never waste a good crisis” pop up. The COVID-19 crisis is no exception to this.
The phrase goes as far back as the days of Winston Churchill’s “never let a good crisis go to waste,” when he argued that the United Nations would never have existed without World War II. Churchill had a point and so do the many people who bring in these words today. In our case in Botswana, the COVID-19 economic crisis has should be treated as an accelerator to our economic strategies more especially those that seek to address inclusiveness and balance wealth between the Have and Have-not. For Botswana, COVID-19 is a crisis that should not be wasted. Given the current socio-economic status quo in Botswana, the reversal of high-income inequality cannot be left to the free market. This is one of the key highlights made by the COVID-19 crisis. To answer the question of “How then do we ensure that this crisis is not wasted” the government and her development partners should be able to duly quantify and qualify the effectiveness of its current policies, precisely those relating to wealth creation for Batswana.
Generally speaking, on paper Botswana has always appeared to be doing very well when it comes to citizen economic empower. For instance, in the past we have been told about the beneficiation and aggregation of diamonds in our country and the establishment of support institution such as LEA, CEDA, to mention a few. But practically the story on the ground says otherwise. Even the renewed focus on citizen economic empowerment through the revised PPAD Act that has been preached over the past few years has little impact on creating wealth for Batswana. All these failures have been with us for the longest time and it took the COVID-`19 crisis to spotlight them hence the need not waste it. It is quite evident that sometimes we need a shock to the system to break the status quo and open up better ways of doing things.
In normal times – like the days when we were able to sell our precious stones – diamonds to the US, China and some part of Asia it became very easy for us to let bad habits such as developing the ‘dependency’ and ‘too much entitlement’ settle in. During those days we had too many initiatives in progress but of course with poor prioritization/implementation.
It is often in times of crisis, high stakes, and urgency that people tend to exhibit better behaviours that are focused on clear objectives that really count. For instance, lately a good number of Batswana have shown huge interest into trying their lack in enterprising. Many of them are hungry not just for success but also for survival. There is high motivation amongst Batswana to end the days in which they were just economic spectators. They now want to be players. Courtesy of COVID-19, many Batswana have literally taken their hunger to the streets to try their luck in catering and eatery businesses. Surely that approach is unsustainable but we all know that it is currently the only option available to them, thanks largely to social injustice that has been going on for some time now. Our social injustice, particularly involving unfair distribution of opportunities, is a huge factor behind the fractured society that COVID-19 found us under. This divided society that we live in now can only be united if we make use of the crisis before us. We are at a point where a majority of the indigenous citizens know their economic status and a sizeable number of them, more especially in urban areas know what they need to do to over their personal economic crisis.
Those in power have an option to guide the nation towards utilisation of the COVID-19 crisis or towards the usual path of missing opportunities. If they want this nation to miss economic growth opportunity, they just need to make sure that the government enclave has the usual conflicting goals that confuse and eat up the majority of our resources. They just simply need to keep initiatives, capabilities, strategies, and teams siloed so the usual bottlenecks, communication breakdowns, slow decision-making, and poor handovers remain in place. But if they want this nation to make use of this crisis, they need to develop a national Innovation Game Plan. They also need to make sure that it is as safe as possible for Batswana – of all walks, to speak up, raise concerns, or bring up errors where they are picked without necessarily labelling them anti-government or negative. In this era of knowledge and gig economy, the higher the quality of information shared between those governed and those governing, the better the quality of decisions that will be made. We cannot win if we remain divided. We need to appreciate and accommodate diversity. Infact the government’s relevant departments and entities should be empowered to iidentify skills needed for modern day public service. The government enclave now, more than ever needs a dedicated and cross-functional team, fully allocated to solve the socio-economic problems we are facing now. The relevant hiring or recruitment departments should bring on board subject matter experts/industry captains. They should deliberately assign some of those people to play devil’s advocate to challenge group-think. This is to say, DPSM or DIS for instance should invite productive dissent to the government enclave who could bring with them questions such as, “What are we missing?”, or “What happens if….”. On other words, our current set up where no questions are asked is working against us. This is not in a way calling for insubordination within the civil service but rather for appreciation of diversity.
We also need to set targets and measure our performance with indicators that are already in place or new ones. We cannot for instance aspire to create jobs, or allocate land without a target and budget for such. Speaking of jobs and land, these two, together with lack of funds for start ups have proven to be our trio headaches. If we intend to take advantage of the COVID-19 crisis and do anything, that something should be solving the trio – Joblessness, Moneylessness and Landlessness. In the end, the #Bottomline is that we cannot waste a crisis that is COVID-19. At bare minimum lets cut our import bill by atleast half.