SMME association commends youth ambition

New enterprise advocacy - Association of Small, Medium and Micro Enterprise Business in Botswana (ASMMEB) has applauded youth’s hunger for business opportunities.

With youth unemployment hovering above 37 percent, according to 2022 statistics, ASMMEB Chairperson, Sello Motseta has commended youth’s ambition to enter the business space.

“This constituency is not averse to taking risk by starting a new business,” said Motseta, at the launch of the

ASMMEB.

The launch was held under the banner: ‘Strengthening support mechanisms and structures for locally owned SMME’s to improve their market access and competitiveness in local, regional and global markets’.

Despite the youth’s business appetite, Motseta warned that the enterprise terrain is punctuated with challenges, suggesting that a practical solution to addressing the growing unemployment problem in Botswana is to use the country’s comparative advantage, its highly trained young population.

“It is suggested that the government should engage the public in general and the youth in particular in exploring employment opportunities outside the country,” said Motseta, urging government to urgently engage stakeholders.

“It is common knowledge that government is generally downsizing and there are fewer jobs readily available for fresh graduates,” emphasized Motseta.

Motseta said youth entrepreneurs are faced with the difficult task of creating their own jobs.

Meanwhile, ASMMEB also bemoaned that despite Botswana’s upper-middle-income country status, the economy has one of the highest rates of income inequality in the world and suffer from high rates of poverty and unemployment.

The Association believes the country’s spiralling unemployment is tied to mis-education, slow economic growth (leading to low job creation), urban expansion and overpopulation due to rural urban migration, poor co-ordination and implementation of government economic and social policies and lack of work experience.