Botswana wins bid to host gambling regulators conference
Pauline Dikuelo | Tuesday January 17, 2023 06:00
Before COVID-19, the conference was hosted in Jamaica, Denmark, South Africa and Melbourne.
The conference will be hosted by Botswana’s Gambling Authority (GA) in collaboration with the International Association of Gaming Regulators (IAGR) in October this year.
It will be a platform for gaming regulators from around the world to meet, learn best practice techniques and strategies, network and exchange views while sharing information and discussing legislation, policies and procedures.
The conference will also be a forum for gambling regulators throughout the world and provides opportunities for its members to engage on issues regarding legislations around gambling.
Gambling Authority’s acting CEO, Emolemo Kesitilwe had earlier told the media that Cabinet had approved that Botswana host this conference. “The conference creates a formidable forum to share regulatory best practices, identify future challenges and opportunities and discuss the latest research and trends.
It is an ideal opportunity to build on our combined efforts to ensure effective gambling regulation worldwide,” he said. IAGR, whose mission is to advance effectiveness and efficiency of gaming regulation, is made up of representatives from gaming regulatory organisations throughout the world. Meanwhile, the local gambling body said it has commissioned two studies to establish the risk factors for problem gambling and the socio-economic impacts of problem gambling in Botswana.
A local consultancy firm, 5 AM Consultancy, has been awarded the tender to carry out research on behalf of the Authority. “We have been doing campaigns around responsible gambling in order to ensure we bring down the five percent to a lower figure. We are currently undertaking two studies, the first one is socio-economic impacts of gambling in Botswana, the other is the risk factors of gambling in Botswana,” Kesitilwe said. These studies, he said will also assist in developing the gambling industry policy, which is in the Gambling Act.
This policy will be endorsed and approved by government through Cabinet. “We have a role to play to ensure that we implement responsible gambling framework, we do industry training, monitoring, we provide public education and awareness, we do cancelling and therapy, we engage with our stakeholders and do involve them in the responsible gambling framework,” he added.
In 2019, the Acting CEO said they have set out to do a study on the prevalence of gambling in Botswana and the country is currently at five percent.