13 Feb 2025

Ministry of Higher education executive management have been urged to come up with an innovative strategy that will serve toward the advancement of service delivery.

Speaking during the ministry’s strategy retreat for executive management in Lobatse on Tuesday, Minister Prince Maele said the ministry needed a strategic plan, which would deliver ministry’s mandate.

“We are here today as a ministry to interrogate, shape and reflect on our mandate, develop the ministry strategic plan for 2025/2030 and commit to deliver 2025/2026 annual plan. We are a new ministry and so developing a strategy means a lot of things, before we go in here we must be aware we must think outside the box. We should do things differently,” he said.

He said the development of the strategy came against the backdrop that there were discrepancies at the Ministry of Higher Education, which was uncoordinated and therefore needed a strategic framework in place where each department would have succinct direction.

“Through this strategy, tough choices have to be made actionable,” he added, adding that Botswana must be on an accelerated developmental growth trajectory.

Further Mr Maele said Botswana was left with 13 years to realising aspirations enshrined in the national Vision 2036.

Therefore, he said government had to facilitate and enable an economic transformation drive to enhance value chains from mineral endowments so as to generate innovation, competitiveness, productivity, efficiency and openness to the world.

As such, he added, the Ministry of Higher Education stood in a better position to contribute to the realisation of Vision 2036 pillars.

He further said government’s focus was to transform technical education in an effort to unlock the country’s economic potential and grow the entrepreneurial spirit.

He said the 2025/26 budget buttressed transformation of Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) education adding that the youth were faced with unemployment.

“If we can be able to transform TVET, economic diversification will be much easier,” he said.

He further said there was need to expedite private sector growth through research and innovation.

“The government must play a facilitator role and not an economic player. There should be a creation of innovation centres of excellence in agriculture, tourism, manufacturing, closely linked to TVET colleges to stimulate and facilitate innovation,” he added. ENDS