Botswana urged to exploit AfCFTA opprotunities
The take- off of African Continental Free Trade Area ( AfCFTA) in Botswana, promises a plethora of opportunities for the country’s economic stimulation and business growth, and all stakeholders should play an active role to ensure that its mandate is fulfilled. Speaking to this publication this week, youthful regional integration expert, serving as a technical advisor under GIZ- SADC’s ‘ Strengthening National- Regional Linkages Programme,’ Kennedy Letlhogela, said that while the AfCFTA promises accelerated socio- economic development for African countries, there should be measures in place to ensure that there is equal access to the opportunities.
He however emphasised that improving security is a high priority that Botswana should take seriously. “The AfCFTA promises to integrate Africa through the removal of trade barriers, allowing for movement of goods, services and persons to move freely from country to country. This will be achieved through the development of trade infrastructure such as one stop border posts, bilateral and trilateral cross border infrastructure such as the Kazungula one stop border post. Through this trading platform, we anticipate that it may be harder to control drug and human trafficking that sophisticated crime such as terrorism may be a potential threat and lastly an influx of undocumented people moving from country to country. These are well known threats to policy makers within the AfCFTA secretariat and they are working extensively to benchmark on organisations such as Europol in creating a centralized system for crime control, the enhancement of digitalisation to include SMART border as mitigation. I am of the belief that because we are aware of these challenges, we will be able to mitigate them prior to full implementation of the trading platform,” he said.
It is great to see youth playing an active role in development, and Letlhogela, who studied development ( International relations and political science), revels in his role as technical advisor of a body that is mandated to capacitate SADC Member States on the implementation of the Regional Agenda. His professional experience is in advisory and advocacy roles, and he also has experience as an international consultant in trade and industry, SMME Development, stakeholder management, strategy formulation, as well as communications and regional integration, and has undertaken assignments from organizations such as African Union, International Trade Centre, GIZ, United National Development Programme, Africa Practice and AfCFTA and Women in Trade. Letlhogela said that going forward, entrepreneurs in Botswana can position themselves to tap into a myriad of business opportunities in the regional landscape, and also take advantage of cross- border networks. “Agro- business for one and the current developments around it show that we have heightened our need to industrialize and manufacture. What makes me happy is that youth in Botswana are using modern and digitalised solutions for their businesses, and that will advance them in participating in the continental value chain. At a policy implementation level, I have seen an influx of programmes that support youth businesses through capacity building and market access for trading, carried out mostly through International Cooperating Partners such as German Development Agency ( GIZ) and the United Nations Development Programme ( UNDP) that recently launched the ATISA Supplier Development Programme.” Women have been lagging behind in
business and trade, and it’s important to develop policies that fully integrate them within the trade eco- systems. “Women are often marginalised in the development of policies aimed at governing trade facilitation.
Due to this, policies that could support efficient participation of women in trade continue to lack hence their contribution to the economy through trade remains unrealised. We need to ensure that we are building systems that can support local women led businesses; Government and the private sector have to develop interventions to facilitate this, otherwise, we run the risk of only building a network of people benefiting from this platform in the urban areas only, thus defying the purpose of AfCFTA, which is to alleviate poverty.” Some of the developed policies in our country look good on paper but is a challenge at implementation stage, and one would wonder what monitoring measures could be put in place to ensure their effectiveness. Letlhogela said national policies should first be aligned to the regional strategic documents set by SADC in the regional integration. “For example, SADC has an online Monitoring and Evaluation system where Member States are to report on the progress on implementing the SADC protocols, including that of Trade which is aligned to the AfCFTA one. Therefore, if we ensure the national and regional linkage of policies, we are allowing ourselves to access performance indicators measurements such as the M& E system. It is important to get member states to align their policies, as well as to report.”
Letlhogela’s background is in policy and regional integration communication, and like any patriotic Motswana, he wants to see Botswana developed in terms of economic growth and trade activity. “I support countries to implement regional integration policies to achieve economic growth. Botswana has struggled to diversify the economy for decades with very little industrialisation. I am happy to see the narrative on manufacturing and industrial development being at the forefront now of how we need to diversify the economy. If we continue working at building our industries, we too will have something to trade with other countries. I hope that soon most Batswana will understand the dynamics at play, and be able to fully gain in the AfCFTA and regional integration.”