I came across a 141-year-old statement by Friedrich Engels that struck a chord with me: ‘Mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing before it can pursue politics, science, art, and religion.’
It got me thinking about the relevance of this quote to current policy-making decisions. Perhaps, at the core of our policies should be addressing basic human needs: food, water, and shelter. To achieve these fundamental objectives, our industrial policy-making must focus on sustainable trade activities that have the potential to scale and create national value chain linkages.
What I’m emphasising is that every policy decision we make should prioritise securing the basics. Our primary mission should be ensuring food security at the household level. From this foundational goal, every decision should contribute to capital accumulation, fostering productivity and employment growth. Have we achieved this primary mission? Let’s examine the evidence.
According to Statistics Botswana’s Quarterly Multi-Topic Survey- Labour Force Module Q3, 2023, the average formal sector employment monthly earnings increased by 13.1 percent from P6,803 in 2022 to P7,692 in 2023. However, alongside this increase, there was a 6 percent rise in severe food insecurity in Botswana, as reported in the National Food Insecurity Prevalence Report by Statistics Botswana. The report indicates that while 46.71 percent of the national population is food secure to mildly food insecure, 26.16 percent of the population is affected by severe food insecurity.
This indicates that despite an increase in average earnings, more households in the country are experiencing reduced quantities of food consumed, resulting in smaller portion sizes, skipped meals, and overall food insecurity. So, I pose the question again: have we achieved the primary objective of ensuring our people have enough to eat?
Have policies such as the National Employment Policy of September 2nd, 2021, which aims to promote local employment through government procurement activities, been effective, or are they merely stopgap measures? This policy seeks to allocate the government’s P20 billion procurement budget to local companies by structuring tenders to encourage submissions from local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMMEs).
I’d like to shift our discussion to the recent budget speech. Over the past week, I’ve been repeatedly asked for my thoughts on the presentation by the Honorable Minister of Finance. My response has consistently been that it was solid and there’s little to critique. However, one aspect I do want to address is the importance of policy, which the minister rightly emphasised as crucial for the effectiveness of the budget.
In this context, let’s examine the highly publicised “Chema Chema” P200 million fund aimed at supporting the informal sector. In 2022, I wrote an article highlighting the significance and contribution of the informal sector to economic growth, titled “Bopudi ba Kgonwa ke ba ba Dinaka.” Therefore, it’s intriguing to see the government finally recognising the sector with a fund of this magnitude. However, the key question we must ask is how this fund will be administered. Furthermore, when we talk about economic growth, what specific contributions do we expect from the informal sector?
Upon examining the Labour Force Module report, I focused on the employment figures within the informal sector segment. It emerged that private households employ 22.7 percent of the labor force engaged in the informal sector. Interestingly, these are the same households grappling with moderate to severe food insecurity. This raises the question: would private households be eligible to access the P200 million fund?
According to the definition, informal sector employment is characterized by certain attributes of the establishment where an individual works, such as being unregistered, lacking formal accounting practices, and having fewer than five employees. Private households, despite their informal nature, rank as the fourth-largest employer in this sector and meet the criteria of an informal establishment. While this may seem incongruous with economic and industrial policy decisions, it warrants some innovative thinking.
The absence of a structured policy based on value chains could, as previously acknowledged by the honorable Minister, result in unrestricted access to every Pula allocated to this Fund intervention by the government’s economic diversification efforts. This, in turn, could limit the transformative impact that such initiatives could potentially have on Botswana and even extend beyond their immediate beneficiaries. “Pelo tshweu entsha lebelo – A good Explanation Satisfies.”
