Kabo Ngwanaamotho

Someone once posed this question to me; “When will Botswana realise that this wealth is theirs and start enjoying it rather than getting other countries to indulge themselves and leave Botswana still poor”

But then again, like ive said before, im not really that good with politics, so some of these issues i find really difficult to understand. Recently there has been proposals for and Independent Power Producer to mine and use Botswana’s abundant coal to produce power that the entire south region needs badly – Now, this has been taken up by a company called CIC Energy and from what i hear after some very long negotiations Botswana managed to negotiate a 25% take off from the power plant that is going to be built, the remaining 75% of course will be for South Africa, i am naiive, so please be patient with me; maybe our current energy demand does not call for any more than the agreed 25%, but are we well covered for the mining boom that seems prominent as the recession curtain is slowly uplifted – if you are going to say yes i can confidently tell you NO, you are lying, i doubt it!

Now why the doubt? – take our biggest income generator for example, diamonds (70% of our export earnings, 30% of GDP, 50% of gorvenment revenue), mmmh, now thats big! And what do we do to show that we have put all our eggs in one basket and that we are confident aint nobody going to break them – we entrust the basket to a family residing in South Africa – again, im a politics rookie, so bear with me. But yeah, our diamonds are mined by a company that is owned by a family in RSA – from what i have heard this is so because they have the expertise that we neen, huh? expertise!!! you want to tell me since 1967 up to now we have gained no expertise as a country at all that we still cant take the matter into our own hands and start enjoying our own profits?

Maybe ke bua thata, hope i dont get into trouble…

Bureacracy – something you aint taught at Uni

I graduated with an MEng (Hons) from the University of Edinburgh in the UK mid 2007. Ive been working at my current company since then.

To be continued…

They say there is a global economic meltdown – they have definitely not been in Botswana, or have they?

Several, mining giants in Botswana have felt the impact of the crisis; Diamonex closed down, African Copper experienced a major slump in its share price, Tati Nickel has retrenched most of its stuff and Debswana group has closed of some of its operations in Letlhakane and Damtshaa and cut down production targets.

In other countries we have heard of bailouts made by the governments to help out their major industries and major banks. In that respect, and being that Botswana’s economy is heavily dependent on mineral resources especially diamonds, I was under the impression the government would pump some several millions into the mining industry to keep it afloat. And they have not done that.

I have two conclusions;

1. The government does not care about the mining industry and has decided that it will find ways to diversify the economy, or

2. The mining industry has not felt a major impact due to economic meltdown and is merely jumping into the bandwagon and making profit out of it.

Meanwhile Botswana has decided to be a philanthropist and has given our dear neighbors Uncle Bob and his Zims a whopping BWP 500 million!

And to show that we are really serious about what we think is most important for the country we have decided to cut off sponsorship for students and tertiary level and introduced school fees for all students in lower levels – and yes we want every Motswana to attain at least the first basic 12 years of education!

Now that’s politics for you.

new year, new stuff, new resolutions…welcome 2009