Regulate agriculture profession- BASPA

To alleviate high unemployment besieging the agriculture graduates, Botswana Agricultural Sciences Professionals Association (BASPA) is calling on government to regulate the agriculture profession. Agriculture graduates have been recently embarking on peaceful protests demanding that government address their plight of unemployment, accusing the Botswana University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (BUAN) for being irrelevant education institution. In an interview, BASPA president Mbiganyi Taka said as BASPA, they strongly believe that a large part of the problem emanates from the unregulated agriculture profession. 

He said they continue to engage the relevant Ministry to advocate for the Establishment of the Regulatory Authority for the Profession – then and only then can some of these concerns be resolved. “The unemployment status of agricultural professionals is Saddening, and we are equally concerned about this, we have in the past seven years of existence worked tirelessly with different stakeholders to find solutions to this national problem,” he said. Taka said they share the same pain, challenges and struggles as everyone else who holds an agricultural qualification, but cannot get any opportunity to utilize their skills and knowledge. 

In efforts of addressing these issues, Taka said BASPA has in the recent years signed a Memorandum of Understanding with BUAN – core to the commitments of this relationship being to establish a comprehensive partnership that addresses employability of Agricultural graduates. 

He also said the MOU focused on the relevance of the general curriculum across the agricultural qualification spectrum, and addressing bottlenecks to enable Agricultural Entrepreneurship amongst graduates. “While we appreciate the gravity of this issue, we strongly believe rigorous stakeholder engagements together with BUAN in addressing employability of graduates would go a long way in helping the challenged Alumni, the current students and indeed the upcoming generations who wants to pursue Agriculture as a career,” said Taka. He said BASPA as a stakeholder in agriculture sector recommend an Agricultural Graduates Pitso, where BUAN, Graduates and relevant stakeholders could actively engage and find ways of improving the status quo – thereafter a comprehensive action plan be developed and stakeholders clearly committing to the implementation of this action plan.