A paralysis of ideas
One of the country’s foundational tenets, one steeped in Setswana culture, is consultation and free speech, the bedrock upon which the kgotla system and democracy have thrived and the modern republic built.
Indeed, idioms such as mafoko a kgotla a mantle otlhe and mmualebe o bua la gagwe, underline the importance our founding fathers placed on dialogue and consultation in the decision-making process. However, beyond dialogue and consultation, is the need to act and it is herein, that for some time, Botswana has fallen short.
Previously, this publication has raised concern that while government and its private sector partners are unmatchable when it comes to developing plans, policies and strategies for each and every single step of the country’s development, implementation continues to hamstring the efforts to bring meaningful change to the lives of ordinary Batswana.
Within the archives of various ministries and departments, volumes of detailed, well-meaning and expensively produced reports, plans, policies and strategies gather dust, while the development aspirations they seek to address remain unachieved. Part of the problem is funding or the mismatch between high ambitions and low finances. But a greater challenge is the difficulty public officers have in transforming a strategy into action, whether the obstacles include political willpower, corruption, poor project management, lack of dynamism in problem solving or inadequate space for creativity in developing solutions.
The same troubles are plaguing the National Business Conference, the biennial event that brings together the cream of the business community and government leadership led by the President. Known informally as the NBC, the event at its essence is a brainstorming session where the public and private sectors assess the challenges facing the economy and develop solutions and ideas to navigate these. As our Bureau Chief in the North notes, over the years, the NBC has devolved into a “talk shop” or more specifically, a highly-lauded event which perennially under-delivers on the promise of producing solutions for the economic challenges the country is facing. Resolutions from previous NBCs are not brought up for interrogation at the next conference, limiting the extent to which both the public and private sector can gauge the impact of the event.
In the absence of such monitoring and evaluation, various speakers at the NBCs are free to make grandiose announcements and pledges, propose wildly imaginative solutions or play to the gallery, knowing that both the public and private sector will not follow up on implementation of the resolutions. NBCs have not always been paralysed by inaction, as can be seen in the past when aggressive leaders at Business Botswana were able to secure commitments to business reforms and other investment climate interventions.
This year’s conference, coming as it did after the COVID-19 disruptions, was expected to see the public and private sector chart a way out of the pandemic economic slump, perhaps seeing how to merge the government’s Economic Recovery and Transformation Plan with Business Botswana’s “Recovery Plan for the Private Sector.” Instead, delegates at the NBC heard much of what they have heard before at previous NBCs and it remains unclear whether any commitments to implementation or the pace thereof have been made.