Program Director,
Your Excellency, President Duma Gideon Boko,
Honorable Ministers and Officials,
Business leaders from Botswana and South Africa,
distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is an honor for me to address this Business Forum on the occasion of the Sixth Bi-National Commission between Botswana and South Africa.
Over the past few days, our ministers and officials have discussed measures to strengthen our political, social, economic and security ties.
In my meeting with President Boko today, we agreed that one of our biggest tasks at this time is to further deepen trade and investment relations between our two countries.
Business has a central role to play in achieving our ambitions for shared and sustainable prosperity.
Botswana and South Africa are neighboring countries, but the people are one.
We have a common history and a common future.
Our economic interests are closely linked. We must therefore seek mutually beneficial development that creates jobs for Batswana and South Africans in equal measure.
Each of us has ample natural resources and developed industrial capacity that we should utilize.
There are many areas in which greater economic cooperation would yield significant benefits.
The first of these is agriculture.
We both are countries of farmers, our agricultural industries have developed here for decades.
We both have ambitions to further develop these industries and expand our agro-processing capabilities. We want to get more value from our land.
There is great potential for us to work together to pursue these ambitions.
We need cooperative mechanisms to manage the flow of agricultural goods between our countries to ensure predictability and stability.
Through the Bi-National Commission we have supported measures to address these matters holistically, including banning the import of certain goods.
There is a commitment to pursue cooperation in the production of vaccines to fight animal diseases.
We are grateful to the Government of Botswana for facilitating the supply of critical doses of vaccines to South Africa to combat foot and mouth disease.
We also need to work together to address the impacts of climate change on agricultural industries, especially as large parts of our respective countries are already water-stressed.
Our agricultural industries are becoming increasingly vulnerable to cycles of drought and flood.
We are therefore committed to greater scientific and technical collaboration, sharing of technology and best practices.
Another area of economic cooperation is infrastructure.
Infrastructure is important to transport agricultural produce and manufactured goods to markets. It is vital for powering factories and mines, irrigating crops, supplying water to businesses and homes, and enabling the rapid flow of information over long distances.
Infrastructure is important to advance industrialization and facilitate trade.
We therefore support the plan to establish a one stop border post at Tlokweng/Kopfontein.
This will help reduce border congestion, facilitate trade and increase efficient movement of people and goods between our countries.
Another cross-border venture is the proposed Lesotho-Botswana Water Transfer Project, which would bring water from Lesotho across South Africa and Botswana.
Together with the Ramotswa Transboundary Aquifer, this initiative will support water security into the future while enabling sustainable growth and development.
Our two rail corporations, Transnet and Botswana Rail, are working together towards the establishment of the Mmabula-Lephalale rail line.
It is expected to be able to transport 18 million tonnes of freight per year on the 117 km long rail link stretch spanning both countries.
The third area of cooperation is in energy.
Both our countries are blessed with abundant supplies of solar energy, which should be used to power our economies and produce green hydrogen for the broader global market.
We commend Botswana Power and Eskom for the agreements they have reached to strengthen energy flexibility, improve grid stability and maintain our power stations.
In the long term, both our countries should consider an energy corridor that locates our renewable generation sites along our borders and connects integrated grids.
There is a compelling case for co-investment through Public Private Partnership to link the power and energy capabilities of our two countries.
The fourth area of cooperation is mineral extraction and beneficiation.
Our wealth base through gold and diamond reserves is known throughout the world, and we have long been dependent on gold and diamonds for our economic growth. As a result, we have been exposed to 'bullish or bearish' price fluctuations.
So we need to build more resilient mining industries to make our economies more resilient.
The important and rare earth minerals we possess provide such an opportunity.
They force us to cooperate in diversifying our mining and mineral-beneficiation sectors.
Both our countries have significant reserves of copper, manganese, lithium and platinum group metals, the global demand for which is continuously increasing.
But if we continue to export them in raw form then we will not realize the real value of these minerals.
By exporting raw minerals, we are actually exporting jobs, creating businesses in other countries and handing over the prosperity of our people.
We must use our proximity and our collective capabilities to work together to make our minerals beneficial at source.
We should use the SADC Industrialization Strategy and Roadmap to guide this work and inform our domestic industrial policies.
We must also deepen the work already underway to create frameworks that define mineral benefits not just from a domestic vantage point, but from a bilateral and regional perspective.
Our development finance institutions and commercial banks should help finance these efforts and mitigate risks.
We must leverage our international partnerships to develop our processing capacity, ensure technology transfer, and participate meaningfully in electric vehicle battery manufacturing.
From our discussions over the past few days, the governments of Botswana and South Africa have ambitious plans to pursue inclusive economic growth through closer cooperation.
We invite the business communities of both our countries to embrace that ambition and deploy their considerable resources, capabilities and energy to foster greater trade and investment.
Through this, we can together create sustainable jobs, set up new industries, invest in infrastructure and extract more value from our abundant natural resources.
We are two countries with one mission: to build a prosperous and secure future for all our people.
Your presence here is a strong statement of your commitment to that mission.
Kelebogile Go Menegne!
I thank you.