06 Jun 2024

As a means of working towards improving research and development, building a knowledge-based economy and linking education with the needs of the country, Botswana has partnered with Korea University, South Korea’s oldest and most prestigious institution of higher learning.

This was revealed by President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi when giving a public lecture at the university in Seoul on Wednesday. His audience was largely made up of university students, but also included Korea University president, Dong One Kim as well as the visiting Botswana delegation.

Stressing that institutions of higher education and research centres derived legitimacy from solving real life problems, Dr Masisi said Botswana was pleased to be able to partner with the Korean national university given how the country used education as a springboard for transformation.

“Botswana welcomes this opportunity to forge closer cooperation and collaboration with Korea. The development path of Korea is nothing but admirable. In a few decades, you have transformed this country from being one of the poorest in the world to being a global benchmark for several distinctive achievements, such as in the areas of Information and Communications Technologies,” the President remarked.

He said the Korean state and society had long identified education as a key enabler for socio-economic success and prioritised studying and application of knowledge and skills to produce various goods that helped transform the country’s fortunes.

“Through the development of the human resource, and without the benefit of the endowment of natural resources, you have rapidly industrialised, raised the standards of living of the people, and have established some of the world’s top and high-tech companies such as Samsung, LG Group, Hyundai, SK and Hanwha, to mention a few,” he said. Such focus and investment in education, research and innovation allowed South Korea to be able to produce products for the international market through human ingenuity, instead of relying on natural resource endowment, Dr Masisi said.

“You have no crude oil, but you beneficiate crude and are a significant exporter of petroleum products. This is ample evidence of the transformative power of human knowledge, creativity and how-to skills or practical competence,” Dr Masisi elucidated.

He said given that Korea was ranked highly in global indices such as for research and development, knowledge production and entrepreneurship output, underpinned by strong linkages between government, academic communities and industry, Botswana was willing to learn from the South East Asian economic powerhouse.

President Masisi argued that it would augment Botswana’s effort of prioritising education as a key enabler for national development. He added that government was focused on transforming the country into a knowledge-based economy, with mindset change, digitisation and value chain development components of the national Reset  Agenda.

“In recognition of the importance of education, we in Botswana have over several years allocated 20 per cent of GDP to education, this being the highest allocation, followed by health. The majority of our citizens receive public education throughout the education cycle from pre-primary to tertiary education with government carrying greatest share of the financial burden. Dr Masisi said it was for Korea University to increase its enrolment of Batswana students from the current two to up to 50 or more, and pledged for government to work closely with the institution in achieving this as well as partnerships in research as well as Korea exchange students coming to Botswana.

“I am eager to have in place reciprocal arrangements with your esteemed university. Universities gain strengths and credibility through internationalisation and cross-pollination of ideas and practices, exchange of information and the development of networks,” Dr Masisi said. ends