Seretse Pats Fashion Mentorship Programme
Pauline Dikuelo | Monday February 27, 2017 16:44
Speaking during the launch of Masa Square Hotel’s fashion mentorship programme, Seretse said that the advisership plan testifies the uniqueness of the youth.
The program which will run for seven months starting from the beginning of March under the theme ‘working together to build Botswana’s creative industry’ will see 12 aspiring fashion designers being mentored by 12 seasoned designers from the local industry.
“What is unique about this generation is that the dilemma between driving economic diversification and using skills demanded by the local markets has revealed an opportunity for driving greater innovation,” Seretse said.
According to the Minister, research on the local economy has noted that youth owned active enterprises in general, and those of young graduates even at high school level, constitute the most promising group of enterprises. He said that the vast majority of start-up active enterprises are micro-employers, meaning they engage up to three people other than the owner.
According to a 2008 Botswana Government Labour Force Survey, approximately 300,000 people worked in the non-formal private sector in Botswana, of which 80 percent were engaged in small, micro and medium enterprises, or SMMEs. Approximately one in three of the workforce engaged in the SMME sector, were operating micro-enterprises.
About 46,000 of these were own-account workers. The rest worked in some 20,000 micro-and small enterprises that provided paid employment to workers other than their owners. Seretse said that these statistics indicate that Botswana has a fairly large sector of micro-enterprises and SME’s for a country of its size.
“This means that the small and micro enterprise sector is overflowing with potential that is in need of harvesting. With this harvesting, the economy of Botswana has much to gain and yield growth from,” he said. He said that it has been documented that experts believe that there is a significant space in the local market for more small and micro-enterprises to enter Botswana’s economy.
“What is unique about this generation of Batswana youth is that the dilemma between driving economic diversification and using local skills demanded by the local markets, has revealed an opportunity for driving greater innovation,” he said.
He said that by mining the potential of the creative industry could also fill a major gap in the local markets as well as open numerous sustainable opportunities for growing Botswana’s business landscape and driving local employment. Further he said that economies across Africa and the world receive substantial contributions to GDP from the creative sector.