LEA, BUAN partner to nurture graduates
The Local Enterprise Authority (LEA) has joined hands with the Botswana University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (BUAN) in an effort aimed at nurturing graduates of the agricultural institution.
As part of the three-year agreement, LEA will offer the incubated students business management services, advisory, training, business coaching and mentoring. BUAN for its part will provide land, technical expertise and equipment. The Authority’s head of Corporate Affairs and Market Access, Boikhutso Kgomanyane told BusinessWeek the partnership is in line with their mandate of empowering and unearthing entrepreneurs.
“There have been 23 incubated graduates at the moment who were selected by BUAN. We will be assisting them with record-keeping, business management, entrepreneurial development, marketing amongst others,” she said.
The incubated graduates have ventured into areas that Botswana imports the most like herbs, mushrooms, piggery, broilers, layers and others, BusinessWeek has learnt.
Over the past financial year, the local economy spent P7.74 billion importing food, mostly from South Africa.
“Our intention is to ensure that their enterprises start well and grow,” Kgomanyane said. “We want to support them to implement what they have learnt at school because we have realised most of the graduates hardly get employed upon completion despite having the skills that can feed the nation. In the long run, we want to also process this produce.” Meanwhile, LEA is assisting informal businesses ravaged by the coronavirus to find their feet by offering them P1,000 each in grants. The funds are part of the P100 million allocated to LEA from the Industry Support Facility, which was launched by the Ministry of Investment and Trade Industry as part of the Economic Recovery Transformation Plan. The grant is aimed at assisting informal sector businesses to revive their operations.