Lobatse benchmarks on Francistown
Patricia Edwin | Thursday August 21, 2014 11:33
One council that was visible at the Francistown Investment Forum Pitso was the Lobatse Town Council, with its leadership taking their attendance seriously.
The investment forum is meant to bring investors from all over the world to Francistown so that it can be the targeted investment centre of vibrancy by 2022.
Mayor of Lobatse, Caroline Lesang, said they were impressed by what Francistown is doing by hosting such an important event.
“We have come all the way to benchmark from your initiative so that we could do a similar thing in Lobatse,” she said.
She hailed the Francistown Pitso and Vision 2022 as something to be proud of because they address issues pertinent to investors such as; land, immigration and labour issues. Lesang further said that they were ready to support Francistown in their endeavour.
“We are yet to receive investors as Francistown is doing due to issues relating to land and so forth but in the meantime, when investors make enquiries with us, we will lead them to Francistown and tell them that opportunities are available in Francistown,” she said.
The CEO of Botswana Investment Trade Centre (BITC) Letsebe Sejoe said on Tuesday that they were looking at taking a similar initiative to the town of Lobatse. “We are working at taking a similar initiative to Lobatse,” he said.
BITC is the main technical sponsor of the Francistown Investment Forum after they jumped on board last year and have been facilitating in the preparations for the first meeting that brought industry captains together this week.
For a long time, the Lobatse town, amongst others, has been dubbed negative names like the ‘ghost town’ because it has not been experiencing any notable development. The town has also not been an attractive destination for investors.
Besides its long-standing history of being the headquarters of Botswana’s judiciary, Lobatse has always been home to the Botswana Meat Commission (BMC).