Youth, women targeted to benefit from AGOA

Market Players gears up to play central capacitation role

Market Players director Katlego Mokgethi, has indicated that they look forward to advancing and serving the interests of youth and women entrepreneurs diligently.

This follows the appointment of Market Players in the Botswana Reference Group for the African Growth and Opportunity Act ( AGOA) National Response Committee under the Gender and Youth Committee.

“This appointment aligns with Market Players’ overarching goal to formulate and implement tangible solutions to reduce the failure rate of citizen- owned businesses in Botswana; as well as our underlying mission to be a catalyst for the convergence of economic development efforts between private sector, civil society and government”.

Market Players recognises the export market as the most feasible method of augmenting the local market of just over two million people, thereby increasing market pool for local businesses.

Market Players is an entrepreneurship development programme aimed at reducing the alarmingly high failure rate of Batswanaowned businesses. Mokgethi has indicated that there is need to converge national efforts towards building a sustainable high- income economy.

“Entrepreneurship is the backbone of any economy and the fact that our local business failure rate is somewhere within the 80 percent mark is very disconcerting; for every local enterprise that shuts down, we lose an opportunity to solve our socio- economic problems”.

SMMEs contribute 75 per cent of formal sector employment. AGOA is a trade agreement between the United States of America and Sub- Saharan Africa that provides duty- free access of close to 7000 eligible products into the US market of over 300 million people. In April this year, the Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry and the Embassy of the United States of America, through the United States Agency for International Development ( USAID) and Trade Hub Project, launched the revised AGOA Utilisation Strategy and Implementation Plan for Botswana.

This provides a comprehensive plan for Botswana to increase its exports to the United States under the AGOA Preference Programme.

Ambassador Craig Cloud noted that the AGOA Preference Programme is a nonreciprocal unilateral trade arrangement that the United States established two decades ago to promote bilateral trade and investment between the United States and sub- Saharan African countries.

“For Botswana, exports through the AGOA programme will provide entrepreneurs with a chance to revive their firms, which have suffered heavily due to the impacts of the ongoing COVID- 19 pandemic, while providing muchneeded employment to revitalise the economy”.

USAID has indicated that in support of Botswana’s National Development Plan ( Vision 2036) and National Export Strategy ( 2019- 2024), the AGOA revised strategy emphasises priority sectors including arts and crafts, jewellery and semi- precious stones, natural indigenous products and meat and meat products, and also capacitates exporters on how to access US markets.