Against the odds, Phikwe refuses to die

The October 2016 closure of its economic mainstay, BCL Mine, left Selebi-Phikwe resembling a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie, a town emptied by a disaster, shops boarded up, homes deserted, the few remaining survivors walking about in stunned disbelief. For town mayor, Molosiwa Molosiwa, however, hope springs eternal in Selebi-Phikwe.  According to him, by the end of the third quarter, 1,239 new jobs had been created in the town through the attraction of investors across different sectors. This is against a target of 1,770 jobs.

SPEDU, the regional agency spearheading Phikwe’s investment and survival drive, is engaged with about 50 companies, some of them citizen-owned, in areas such as information technology, manufacturing, agriculture and construction. Collectively, the companies are expected to invest about P1.8 billion in the region.