Christmas in Botswana & Business Opportunities

It's that time of the year when most young city dwellers are frantically organising to go to their masimo and meraka. For most, they would have been busy working in the city (the whole year) with little opportunity to visit their parents and relatives back in the rural areas. So, come christmas the city of Gaborone becomes almost deserted. You can literally stand in the middle of what used to be a traffic jammed highway for 5 minutes without seeing any vehicle coming your way.

So, business can sometimes be bad in Gaborone, this time of the year. On the contrary, this time usually brings a lot of joy for farmers in the rural areas. It is time for celebration, and goats and chickens get slaughtered, as most Batswana relish goat meat and Tswana chicken. For the aspiring young farmers, it is not a bad idea to venture into farming. Agriculture is basically one industry one cannot regret by going into; the returns are enormous. In fact the Botswana Development Corporation, a parastatal organisation, has put up proposals for interested investors to come forward and establish joint ventures with it for the production of dairy products.

It seems the responses are going to be positive, from the look of things. I don't have the numbers, but not so long ago I had one Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) student approaching me for ideas on how to put up a business proposal. That is, after realising I have some training in Animal Health and Production. Who says Batswana are not entrepreneurial? This is a common fallacy; and I cannot understand why people perpetuate this negative stereotyping. This is a great country with good people. Stop pulling yourself down; I mean if Batswana were not entrepreneurial or hardworking, this country would not be where it is. Of course more can be done, but compared to the rest of the world we are doing well.