27 Mar 2025

The Youth Development Fund (YDF) is undergoing review as government has realised that it was not fit for purpose and needs to be assessed to be restructured to become more effective in empowering the country’s youth. 

The Minister of Youth and Gender, Ms Lesego Chombo revealed this before the Parliamentary Committee of Supply on Tuesday while presenting her ministry’s budget proposals for the 2025-26 financial year.

She said they had noted that the YDF initially intended for out-of-school youth, had now been applied for by degree holders as a consequence of their unemployment, and that many applicants were not entrepreneurs but youth who sought funds to relieve their economic distress.

Ms Chombo said government would look into how the YDF could be better tailor made to fund successful enterprises, structured in a manner that could lead to better results, address training and market access challenges and does not present a one size fits all approach.

In their contributions, Members of Parliament (MPs) buttressed the need for the YDF to be improved.

Specially Elected MP, Ms Bogolo Kenewendo said the YDF needed to be transformed to deliver better impact in the domestic economy, through leveraging some of the funds to create a multiplier effect.

She also called for the ministry to bring back the Botswana National Youth Council (BNYC) to the stature it had been before, its leadership elected by the youth not appointed by a minister, and also utilising BNYC youth centres across the country for leisure, networking and utilising their skills in the creative sector.

Ms Kenewendo congratulated Minister Chombo for being recently elected into a new role as chairperson of the Specialised Technical Committee on Gender Equality and Women Empowerment at the United Nations headquarters in New York, United States of America.

She said this could accord the minister to look at solutions from different stakeholders for Botswana to learn from as the country looks to achieve women empowerment and to fight the scourge of gender-based violence (GBV). Molepolole South MP, Mr Shima Monageng called on government to revisit the founder of the Brigades Movement, the late Mr Patrick van Rensburg’s Education with Production philosophy, which he said could guide towards engaging communities in empowering the youth through production-oriented vocational training.

Mr Monageng lamented that government 14 years ago, had taken over brigades from the communities, which he said killed self-reliant community based training and cooperative enterprise ethos championed by Mr Van Rensburg.

He said the ministry needed to finance, train, mentor and monitor the youth into their YDF businesses and those who graduate towards self-sustaining businesses should become mentors to younger youth in their business startups.

Maun East MP, Mr Goretetse Kekgonegile said services provided to the youth should be decentralised and availed across the country for ease of access.

Mr Kekgonegile said YDF funding needed to be varied, and the youth in areas such as the Ngamiland and Okavango villages, needed to be offered a higher amount than P100 000 as they are far from some amenities, which inflated startup costs.

He also stressed the importance of technical education and a revival of the brigades, stating that this would address vocational jobs and small enterprises being taken up by foreigners, while Batswana youth were untrained and unemployed.

Thamaga/Kumakwane MP, Mr Palelo Motaosane said YDF applicants were sometimes rejected without any clarity being offered. He said even those youth who were used to herding livestock and small stock or farming at their family land, were denied funding for what was already their passion, for technical reasons.

Mr Motaosane thus called for better and more innovative assessment of applicants, and that assets such as ownership of land or boreholes should not be sought from the youth. ENDS