The world has generally been evolving, but the Covid-19 pandemic and the evolving battle in Russia – Ukraine has made this evolution much faster and more complicated than ever before. These developments have compressed into a twenty-four (24 months) trends that could otherwise have taken decades to emerge. Most governments are currently faced with emerging and aggravated economic challenges such as; increased and urgent healthcare expenditure, unprecedented job losses, disrupted import supply, escalating cost of living, scaling down and/or relocation of foreign investors and, decline of tax revenue due to low economic activity – especially during the hard lockdown times.
In Botswana these realities and many others have put our economy and humanity in a truly difficult and tight space. It has terribly exposed the fragility of our economy and economic models. Like every global crisis – it has also prompted us to introspect and look much deeper and sincerely into our economic models and processes with a spirit of building more resilient and sustainable ones. Fragilities of Botswana’s current socioeconomic development ecosystem includes: over reliance on exports, exportation of raw materials, high unemployment, low and stagnant job creation, poverty, high income inequalities and, minimal economic diversification activity.
Over the years – throughout the globe – Social Enterprising or Social Entrepreneurship has been emerging and favored to strengthen the process of overcoming such socioeconomic fragilities and ensuring sustainability of economies fragile such as ours. What is Social Enterprise (SE)? An enterprise – whether private or social – is fundamentally concerned with self-sufficiency and the generation of profits. However, SE distributes all or a significant portion of its profits to a social or environmental purpose i.e. social returns (Pillai; 2011). In simpler terms think of SE as a Social Business, it is run on sound business principles providing a product or service that directly benefits society or distributes its profits to social impact programming. Whilst private enterprises generate profits for private shareholders, SE generates all or a significant portion of its profits to social impact reprogramming.
What is the difference between SEs and Community Serving Organisations (CSOs)? CSOs exist on a principle and shaky foundation of uncertainty; they rely on grants, donations and volunteerism to advance social impact objectives. SEs on the other hand strive to advance social impact on a principle of sustainability through self-sufficiency and generation of profits. SEs seek to build strong balance sheets and cash flows. SEs can receive and resource mobilize through grants and social good donations like CSOs, but SE donations and/or grants are meant to be once off, the SE is expected to trade its way to suitability and self-sufficiency after the seed grant or donation. Unlike CSOs, SEs can seek loan financing and attract investors, however they cannot afford to offer conventional market Return on Investment (ROI) they instead largely offer Social Return on Investment (SROI) or a statement of Development.
Currently social impact in Botswana has – and is – mainly funded and stained through various government programs and offices. Government efforts are largely complimented by international development partners’ grants and programs. These efforts are further supported by private sector Corporate Social Investment (CSI) efforts. Most of these are implemented and rolled out by CSOs at community and implementation level. These are all vital and highly appreciated social impact funding vessels; however this support is in the form of grants and donations that do not drive sustainability of supported/funded social impact interventions and organistaions.
For instance; from time to time government suspends support to socioeconomic programs to focus its resources on emerging and contending national development needs. Similarly the private sector only funds social impact interventions when they have handsome returns/profits margins. International development partners are no different, they only – and mostly – fund social impact initiatives were the need is grave but limited resources, the fact that Botswana has been classified as an upper-middle-income country has made this type of funding and support more difficult and less frequent. Notwithstanding this, our social deficiencies are still prevailing, widening and mutating.
The question is what’s the best way forward? As insurmountable as it may seems, it is not a time for despair. We need innovative long term interventions that ensure sustainable and self-sufficient socioeconomic programming – particularly at household and community level. Thriving SEs provide us with a better and more sustainable social impact intervention solution in this regard. Given Botswana’s current – and foreseeable – social and economic fragilities it is quite clear we need to build vibrant and sustainable socioeconomic ecosystems. Botswana has vast untapped social needs and market gap overlaps which are highly fertile foundations for a thriving SE ecosystem. We (Impact Botswana) envision a socioeconomically inclusive and vibrant Botswana. A Botswana were thriving SEs exist and deliver alongside prospering Private Enterprises and incredibly impactful CSOs.
A Botswana were SEs play a huge and key role in redefining the economy through job creation, uplifting communities, reducing inequalities and, diversifying the economy. We have started looking into many of these social needs and market gaps to establish models and ecosystems best suited to deliver sustainable social impact and capitalize on the market gap(s). We continue to explore more of these opportunities and possible partnerships, we will be glad to engage with more likeminded individuals, communities and institutions for possible partnerships in advancing and growing the SE agenda – and journey – in our country and beyond. Let’s do it, we are ready to get it done.
Taziba* is a founding team members at Impact Botswana & the Tripartite Think-Tank. He can be reached at [email protected]
