Faced with a perennially uncertain economic future as a result of the world economy that will simply not recover, there is a lot of soul searching that has to be done.
Unemployment remains at its highest. We do not need to churn out statistics to prove that an unsustainably high number of Batswana are today out of work.
For Botswana youth unemployment was very much a feature of their life long before the economy collapsed in 2008.
Many of the high school leavers, and indeed university graduates have now been unable to secure any form of meaningful employment for well over ten years.
Such people have lost all sense of self esteem and dignity as a result of the idle life that they are leading.
Because of the high numbers of unemployment, if the problem is not addressed one way or another, it is a time bomb.
We are breeding an entire generation which feels very deeply that it owes nothing to its society, a generation that habours deep resentment, envy and hatred against those of their people they somehow perceive as lucky to be able to just make ends meet.
In short we are planting seeds of self-destruction in our own society.
We are creating a gap that literally cuts off continuity of our nation.
And that cannot be right.
While there are many stopgaps in the form of temporary programmes set up to mitigate the effects of unemployment, the worrying factor is that for a long time now, as a society, we seem no longer able to come up with big ideas either to create employment and or attract investment.
We may fault past leaders and their administrations for failing to succeed in their efforts to diversify the economy, but you cannot blame them for lack of trying.
They were always on the road trying to do something.
But with the current administration, it seems like we have given up.
We simply are not coming up with any new initiatives at all.
That spells disaster and despondency for it kind of gives in to hopelessness.
While in the past the catch word was foreign investment as we tried to diversify the economy, India, Thailand, Pakistan, Bangladesh all boast multi-billion dollar economies that are fuelled by small industries, the informal sector and SMMEs.
These sectors are so well organized that they serve these countries so much so that they have become a big revenue earner for governments as well.
This is over and above employing millions and millions of people.
Our sluggish economy means that we no longer can look up to government to do everything for us.
That is a history that we have to put behind us; for good.
It is absurd that we still have a majority of our people not only looking up to government but also still dreaming of securing formal employment when circumstances on the ground all point otherwise.
Because starting business has become not only much more expensive but also a lot riskier, it is time we considered the alternatives to starting a formal sector business.
It is regrettable that right from the beginning our education system promoted, nurtured and engendered all hopes of a working life in the formal, white collar sector.
We woke up too late to the reality that blue collar technical training was what was most marketable when the economies went up and when they went down.
Now we have spent resources training people in skills that we do not have much need for.
That is a fundamental problem the ramifications of which we will have to stay with for decades to come.
But the greater tragedy is that even if there is now clear evidence of a mismatch, it seems to be taking forever for corrective measures to be put in place.
Our suggestion is that more efforts should be expended on developing the informal sector.
Our education system should change radically in that regard.
To be fair to the authorities, there is a move towards changing course of our education system to put more impetus and emphasis on technical training.
It is, however, lamentable that such efforts are too slow in being put into practice, with infinitely high amounts of time, money and other resources spent not on training but rather on producing research documents that almost invariably always point to the need for a change of course.
We need to start producing graduates who upon leaving their academic halls will not start sprouting the streets looking for jobs.
Rather our graduates should be people who upon leaving schools will be looking for workshop spaces on where to produce their own handmade goods.
We need to produce graduates who will become employers immediately they leave school.
We need to produce graduates who are not looking up to government that trained them to now continue with their upkeep either by providing work, internship and, god forbid, social security as we now seem to be headed.
To achieve all these we need to emphasize the importance of the informal sector.
We need to emphasise the resilience of SMMEs.
Our policies as a country should change course and adapt to a future where small industries will be the nerve centre of our national economic system.
We can only do that if we give pride to those already involved in such sectors.
We need to create role models in such sectors, proving to the greater nation that people need not be failures in life for them to focus their life careers in SMMS, the informal sector or engaged one way or another in the small industries.
The good thing is that in today’s excellent forms of globalised communication and information travel it is very practical for such small sectors to create linkages with the world economy.
One can be operating a small craft shop in Shakawe while their market is an up-market outlet in the centre of either New York and or London.
