Addressing the “pressing unemployment crisis, especially the youth at 38% unemployment,” President Boko declared an aggressive, coordinated response centred on job creation and skills development. The government’s Botswana Economic Transformation Programme (BETP) is designed to create 512,000 jobs, targeted primarily at the youth. To coordinate this effort, the Presidential Youth Empowerment Campaign (PYEC) has been established as a high-level national programme, mobilising a task force in partnership with UNICEF and the United Nations to develop a coordinated, data-driven strategy. The initial phase involves a baseline study to identify 1,000 promising candidates and produce key deliverables like a Botswana Digital Employability Index, a crucial tool for guiding future, targeted interventions that will be scaled to 10,000 participants.
PYEC is focused on tangible outcomes, with initial projects set to debut, including the Climate-Smart Horticulture Development Programme, which aims to skill and capacity-build over 500 small-hold farmers, facilitating their access to local and export markets through a horticulture-specific fund. Other immediate projects include the Textile Acceleration Programme, the Government Automobile Maintenance Programme (aimed at skills development in maintenance), and a Digital Content Creation Hub, all with mentorship components for the growth of priority industries. Crucially, new agreements with De Beers will also open international opportunities, launching the International Graduate Development Programme, a rolling 2-year programme designed to equip graduates with “future fit skills” across De Beers’ global operations.
In addition, University sponsorships for Masters and PhD studies and internships will be launched in December, along with the Diamond Entrepreneurship Programme—two five-year programmes designed to develop Batswana entrepreneurs as diamantaires or in diamond-related services. The President also announced the decision to avail P200 million from the Alcohol Levy Fund towards the procurement of Creative Arts content from young people, alongside discussions to complete and operationalise a 50-bed Youth friendly rehab centre in Serowe in the last quarter of the financial year.
