Going forward only those nations that up their game with regards to productivity and efficiency will be successful in the ongoing contest to dominate the global economy.
The era of using natural resources to fuel economies is fast going past us.
And it will not be long before it becomes history.
Botswana has for over forty years now relied on diamonds to fuel her economy.
The influence of diamonds on Botswana’s economy has in some quarters been uncharitably compared to an athlete who uses such drugs like steroids to win competitions.
It is a painful analogy, but one that is difficult to brush off.
The economy of Botswana has been wholly dependent on diamonds such that without diamonds it is impossible that we could have achieved what we did.
While acknowledging diamonds it is important that going forward we put in place plans to replace the resource with renewable assets that can drive our economy to new heights.
And those assets are human resources.
Thankfully, diamonds have allowed Botswana to create an exceptional pool of educated and talented people who are also trainable and adaptable to many circumstances.
In that way diamonds have provided this country with immeasurable wealth of a head start.
What we need to do is to work at making our people more productive such that they can in time fill the void that will inevitably be left behind by diamonds.
All evidence point to the fact that with time, diamonds will get depleted.
But even before they get depleted it will be so expensive as to ultimately be uneconomic to continue mining them.
These are stark realities for which we should prepare.
All indices of competitiveness often point out that productivity is a big challenge that Botswana still has to grapple with.
Related to that is the fact often pointed out by world investors that Batswana have a bad work ethic.
Recoiling into a nationalist cocoon and start defending ourselves is by all measure akin to denialism.
All it does is to delay us as a nation from facing up to our shortcomings so that we can address them.
In the meantime, the world passes on as the countries against which we compete in efforts to attract international capital and investors perennial outperform us.
As Batswana we have to face up to our defects when it comes to work ethic.
And this applies to both the private and public sectors.
There is often a misperception that private sector does not have productivity issues.
Our view is that it is the private sector that needs more attention than the public sector.
This is because going forward, the private sector is the one that will carry the whole destiny of the nation, while the public sector is reduced to a realm not much bigger than providing regulatory and legal frameworks.
Productivity that we are referring to has to start at home and at an early age such that it becomes a part of our socialization programme.
It is the little things that we do as individuals in our private spaces that ultimately get internalized as to become negatives that undermine efforts to compete in a global scale.
In that score it has to start at individual level; how one manages their time, how they relate with others and the environment such that we can start dreaming of translating those into a national scale.
Otherwise we are doomed as a nation.