BAMB AND BMC JOIN FORCES
Botswana Agricultural Marketing Board (BAMB) and Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to collaboratively work together on sharing resources and improve productivity.
Therefore the two entities are looking at collaborations in the areas of market penetration, branding and European Union (EU) holdings, joint financing efforts, capacity building and secondment of officers.
The MOU will be subject to review every two years in order to add more areas of collaboration and to gauge the benefits reaped from the agreement. Speaking at the signing ceremony on Monday, BMC Chief Executive Officer, David Tsheboeng, said the collaboration is part of the Reset Agenda, which the government has adopted.
“Sharing of resources makes us efficient, effective and affords us the ability to manage costs. Therefore this will reduce the duplications which we sometimes have as government departments. So, this forms part of one government policy. From now on, there will be joint marketing efforts and exhibitions which we will do together,” said Tsheboeng.
The relationship between the two entities have already got off ground with BAMB inspecting BMC’S EU holdings. “This agreement will allow us to complement each other, resource-wise. For instance, where we don’t have offices or establishments, we will be able to utilise BMC resources and vice versa. Since BMC have EU holdings, we will give them our veterinarians to do inspections for them, obviously some of the services will be for free but others will be paid for. For us, too, we are going to benefit from BMC’S laboratories to test our produce,” explained BAMB Acting Chief Executive Officer, Lameck Nthekela.
BAMB and BMC were placed under the Ministry of Entrepreneurship last year when the rationalisation process of ministries and government
parastatals began. With value chain development a core mandate of the government of late, it is expected the
collaborative efforts of the two entities will bear fruit more so that the agriculture value chain opportunities remain untapped.