Former British colonies uncertain as Brexit starts
Bame Piet | Friday April 21, 2017 18:04
How many Batswana are currently living in the EuroZone?
Batswana are not many here. All together we have in the region of about 60 living in different countries like Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Vatican. But in the UK the number goes up to a thousand.
How has the mood been since Brexit referendum last year and the ultimate commencement of the Brexit process at the end of March?
It is something that has come as a shock. One could imagine that the EU had been established in the post World War II period and a project that has been associated with peace, a successful regional integration, with economies that have been integrated and very viable and successful.
Now for it to have failed this particular challenge, obviously its something that should worry the member states to reflect on the need for unity and solidarity. Even for us at the African Union have looked up at the EU as something worth emulating. As the African Caribbean Pacific and other former colonies, we joined the partnership with EU through the Lome Convention under the framework of EU.
But when they leave it is a period of uncertainty, we do not know what it would mean for us because we just concluded the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) and other trade arrangements. Negotiations are ongoing on the successor of the Cotonou Agreement, the question is what will happen after February 2020 when the Cotonou Partnership Agreement elapses.
Has the UK ever engaged you, its former colonies before the Brexit?
Actually they are bound by the Treaty obligations not to engage until such time they have resolved the exit process. They still have to deal with the issues on the severing of the obligations, the negotiations have not started, but that does not mean that people cannot ask questions.
For now it is more about saying what are the implications. But the indication is that the aim is for the UK to build stronger ties with countries that have been its partners, but the issue is about the details – if you had an agreement that was very clear and specific on a number of issues and that agreement comes to an end, and you say there would be normal relations, the question then is how would it look like.
The EU has been our beef market for decades, how is Brexit going to affect our beef exports?
Not necessarily. At the time we entered with the UK it was simply because of how the Treaty of European Economic Community (ECC) was structured at the time - that if UK joined the EEC countries from the Commonwealth that were historical close ties with the UK were welcomed to apply. It was not an obligation for us to join, but we saw an opportunity in the institutional arrangement and we applied.
If we did not see any benefits to the country we could have decided to live on our own. But Brexit does not mean that our beef exports will be affected because we have an EPA with EU, which is still valid. There are ways in which you access the market, e.g. if you have a company that is marketing your beef that is entering the EU through UK, then you would have to take into account the fact that your product enters the UK, it has not entered the EU, and therefore means access to EU market is not through UK. We are safe but we have to make sure that the arrangement that will exist post Brexit are in our interest.
Populism and nationalism have been blamed for the Brexit and apparent negative attitude towards foreigners. What are your observations?
The issues are that the economies of these countries have not been creating jobs and therefore have created challenges and these are not unique to the EU. But in the case of the highly industrialised developed countries is that they have to deal with the problem of migration of people moving there for better opportunities who apply pressure on social services.
Another challenge is that the Western Europe is highly industrialised than the east and therefore there is movement of people to the west who are willing to take any jobs that the locals may not want to take. Populism is part of how people are reacting and identify foreigners as a source of their problems and right-wing politicians are manipulating this situation and blaming foreigners for all social ills such as crime and unemployment.
There are reports that there has been an increase in racially motivated attacks since last year, have you come across such reports involving Batswana or other non-EU nationalities?
No, I have not come across that myself, but the reports may be statistics coming from institutions like the police. Of course there maybe instances where media would have reported about incidents of attacks or associated with elections such as right-wing politics in the Netherlands, people see these instances as violence.
What have been your office’s achievements in the last 24 months?
We have undertaken promotional activities in several countries such as a collaboration with the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce, in France, and Luxembourg to promote Botswana tourism especially around this period of the year. We want to contribute to the overall increase in number of tourists going to Botswana and create more jobs. There are other spinoffs derived from tourism such as food industry.
The Cotonou Partnership Agreement is coming to an end in February 2020 and we are participating in the preparations for negotiations on an agreement to replace the partnership. We have a development cooperation between Botswana and the EU, and some of these partnerships support regional integration.
We have a partnership at the level of SADC, which is key to regional integration. Then we also have intra ACP programme that entails cooperation at a wider ACP level. We have integrated private sector development programme that was handed to Botswana and is being implemented by Business Botswana.
There are programmes that support Non Governmental Organisations and a programme that supports our Parliament. Some of our MPs are members of the ACP Parliamentary Association. There are cultural exchange programmes such as the one that targets the film industry that enables local filmmakers to collaborate with others outside the country to produce something and can get support from the Fund. We are doing a lot to promote the interests of our country in the international community.