The recent wave of graduation ceremonies across Botswana’s institutions of higher learning has been a source of considerable pride. Many young people have completed their studies, families have celebrated years of sacrifice, and our universities and colleges have sent another cohort of graduates into the world of work. Yet, behind the celebrations, I have found myself asking a sobering question: how many of these graduates will find meaningful employment in the months ahead, and how many will end up roaming the streets in search of jobs that simply are not there?
I am concerned about the capacity of our economy to create opportunities at the pace at which we are producing educated and skilled young people. A graduation certificate represents potential; the economy must provide the conditions in which that potential can be applied, rewarded and turned into productive work.
There is a narrative that has become increasingly popular in Botswana whenever the subject of unemployment, particularly graduate unemployment, arises. We are repeatedly told that our universities are producing graduates who are inadequately prepared for the labour market, that there is a mismatch between the skills graduates possess and those demanded by industry, and that institutions of higher learning must therefore change their programmes to produce more employable graduates.
While there is merit in some of these observations, I believe we have become disproportionately preoccupied with the supply side of the labour market while paying insufficient attention to the demand side.
We seem to have accepted, almost without questioning it, that the principal problem lies with the universities and their graduates. But perhaps we should ask a more fundamental question:
Are our businesses growing sufficiently to absorb the talent, knowledge, creativity and innovation that some of our higher education institutions are producing?
After all, graduates cannot employ themselves simply because they possess qualifications. They need businesses, industries and institutions that are expanding, investing, innovating and creating new economic opportunities.
A country can produce exceptionally talented graduates, but if its businesses are stagnant, undercapitalised, unambitious and unwilling or unable to expand, unemployment will persist regardless of how frequently universities redesign their curricula.
The problem, therefore, may not be that we are producing too many under-prepared graduates. It may be that we are producing graduates for an economy that is not creating enough opportunities for them. Economic growth is ultimately driven by the ability of enterprises to produce more goods and services, enter new markets, invest in technology, develop new products, increase productivity and employ more people.
Businesses that grow create jobs. Businesses that innovate create new industries. Businesses that expand into regional and international markets generate foreign exchange and stimulate further investment. Unfortunately, Botswana has struggled to develop a sufficiently dynamic and expanding private sector capable of driving this process.
We have many businesses that have existed for years, sometimes decades, but have remained virtually unchanged in their scale of operations. There are businesses in Botswana that started ten or twenty years ago with one or two employees. Today, ten or twenty years later, they still employ essentially the same one or two people.
The business may still be operating, its owners may still be earning an income, and it may even be regarded as an established enterprise. But from an economic development perspective, what has actually grown? Has its production capacity expanded? Has it entered new markets? Has it developed new products? Has it invested in technology? Has it increased its workforce? Has it become sufficiently sophisticated to employ graduates in finance, engineering, marketing, technology, research or business development?
If the answer to most of these questions is no, then we must confront an uncomfortable reality: we have businesses that survive, but not necessarily businesses that grow.
The survival of a business is not the same as the growth of an enterprise. And an economy populated by businesses that merely survive cannot generate the scale of employment required to absorb an expanding and increasingly educated workforce.
We should be asking why so many of our enterprises fail to graduate from micro-businesses into small businesses, from small businesses into medium-sized enterprises, and from medium-sized enterprises into large, competitive companies. This is where our economic development debate should be concentrated.
The labour market has two sides. On one side is the supply of labour: graduates, technicians, artisans, professionals and other people seeking employment. On the other side is the demand for labour: businesses, industries, public institutions and other organisations that create employment opportunities.
We have spent considerable time examining the supply side. We have questioned the quality of graduates, their communication abilities, their practical experience, their digital competencies and their readiness for employment. We have not interrogated the demand side with the same intensity.
Why are businesses not expanding? Why are they not investing in new technologies? Why are they not developing new products? Why are they not entering regional markets? Why are they not creating new divisions and business lines that require additional human capital? Why do so many businesses remain permanently small?
These are fundamental economic questions.
A business that has no growth strategy, no ambition to enter new markets, no investment programme and no plans to diversify its operations will have little reason to recruit additional employees, regardless of the quality of graduates available.
Even the most talented graduate cannot be absorbed by a business that has no intention of expanding. We must therefore be careful on how we treat graduate unemployment – it is not an exclusively education-sector problem. It is perhaps more fundamentally, a private-sector development problem.
One of the most important indicators of economic transformation is the emergence of companies that grow beyond their original size and become significant employers.
Where are Botswana’s rapidly expanding manufacturing companies; where are the technology companies employing hundreds of software developers, engineers and data scientists; where are the large agro-processing enterprises employing agricultural scientists, food technologists, engineers, marketing specialists and supply-chain professionals; where are the pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies creating demand for chemists, pharmacists, biotechnologists and researchers; where are the engineering companies expanding into regional markets? where are the indigenous mining-technology companies developing innovative solutions for the mining industry? where are the companies commercialising research produced by our universities?
We cannot have a meaningful conversation about graduate employability without confronting these questions.
Our universities can produce graduates in mining engineering, metallurgy, electrical engineering, biotechnology, agriculture, computer science, finance, agriculture and other disciplines. But if businesses are not establishing new industries, expanding existing operations or investing in innovation, where exactly are these graduates expected to work?
I believe that it is far-fetched to expect universities to compensate for the absence of an expanding productive economy.
There is an uncomfortable dimension to this discussion that we must not avoid. We have become accustomed to holding Government and universities responsible for the country’s economic challenges. Government is expected to create an enabling environment, provide infrastructure, facilitate access to finance and implement appropriate economic policies. Universities are expected to produce employable graduates and undertake research that supports economic development.
All these responsibilities are legitimate. However, what responsibilities are we assigning to the private sector itself?
Business people cannot simply expect Government to create an enabling environment, universities to produce graduates and taxpayers to finance infrastructure while businesses themselves remain content with operating at the same scale for decades. The private sector must also demonstrate ambition, entrepreneurial capacity, investment appetite and a willingness to take calculated risks. It must invest in technology, improve productivity, develop new products, explore regional and international markets, build management capacity and expand its operations.
Business owners must ask themselves whether they are building enterprises capable of becoming significant contributors to the economy or simply creating small businesses that provide livelihoods for themselves and perhaps one or two employees.
There is nothing inherently wrong with a small business. Indeed, small enterprises are important to every economy. The problem arises when an entire business ecosystem struggles to produce companies that grow, scale and become significant employers.
Botswana cannot build a diversified economy through businesses that have no ambition to grow beyond their founders.
Botswana has invested considerable effort in promoting entrepreneurship, particularly among young people. However, starting a business and building an enterprise are two different things. Starting a business is about identifying an opportunity and establishing an operation.
Building an enterprise is about developing systems, creating a competitive advantage, accessing new markets, mobilising capital, investing in technology, building management capacity and growing the organisation beyond its original size.
We have to move our economic development agenda beyond counting the number of businesses registered, the number of entrepreneurs trained and the number of individuals who have received start-up funding.
We should instead be measuring how many businesses survive beyond five years? how many grow their annual turnover? how many increase their workforce? how many transition from micro to small enterprises? how many transition from small to medium-sized enterprises? how many introduce new products and services? how many export beyond Botswana? how many invest in research, technology and innovation? how many employ university graduates? how many become significant contributors to national production and exports?
These are much more meaningful indicators of private-sector development.
We need to create an ecosystem that rewards and supports business growth, not merely business creation.
This brings me to the role of universities. I fully support the need for universities to continuously improve the quality and relevance of their programmes. We must produce graduates who are intellectually capable, technologically competent, innovative, adaptable and able to solve real-world problems. We must also strengthen work-integrated learning, internships, entrepreneurship education and industry collaboration.
Universities must evolve. It is not enough to produce graduates who are qualified for the jobs that happen to exist today. Our institutions must develop graduates who can compete globally, adapt to rapidly changing technologies and meet international standards of professional practice. They must be equipped with strong disciplinary knowledge, digital and technological fluency, critical thinking, communication skills, creativity and the ability to solve complex problems. Botswana’s graduates should be able to hold their own in any competitive labour market, while remaining deeply equipped to contribute to the development of our own economy.
Just as importantly, graduates must be effective contributors to the growth of business enterprises in Botswana. A graduate in engineering should be able to help a company improve production processes and adopt new technologies; a graduate in finance or business should help strengthen management, investment decisions and access to markets; and graduates in science, agriculture and technology should help firms develop new products, improve quality, raise productivity and compete beyond our borders. Universities must therefore prepare people not only to find jobs, but to help businesses become more productive, innovative and capable of employing others. This calls for much stronger engagement between universities and industry in shaping curricula, applied research, work-integrated learning and the commercialisation of ideas.
However, we must resist the temptation to make universities the convenient scapegoat for an economy that is not creating sufficient employment opportunities. Universities are not factories whose primary purpose is to produce graduates for a fixed number of existing vacancies. They are institutions that develop human capital, generate knowledge, undertake research, produce innovations and expand the productive capabilities of society.
Indeed, some of the most important economic opportunities of tomorrow may not exist today. Graduates must therefore be equipped not only to fill existing jobs but also to develop new products, establish enterprises, create industries and solve problems that have not yet been adequately addressed.
But even the most entrepreneurial graduate needs an enabling economic ecosystem, access to capital, markets, infrastructure and opportunities to commercialise ideas. A graduate cannot create a successful manufacturing enterprise simply because a university has taught entrepreneurship. The broader economy must provide the conditions under which entrepreneurial ideas can become viable, growing businesses.
If Botswana is serious about diversifying its economy and reducing unemployment (and I believe it is becoming serious), we must make the growth of existing businesses and the emergence of new, competitive enterprises a central national priority. This requires a deliberate programme of enterprise development.
First, we must identify businesses with the potential to grow and help them overcome barriers to expansion, particularly access to finance, land, infrastructure and markets.
Second, we must create mechanisms that encourage businesses to invest in technology, research, innovation and productivity improvements.
Third, we must strengthen linkages between universities, research institutions and industry so that research outputs can be translated into commercial products, services and new enterprises.
Fourth, we must support businesses to enter regional and international markets. Botswana’s domestic market is relatively small, and companies that aspire to significant growth cannot rely exclusively on domestic demand.
Fifth, we must develop a new generation of indigenous companies capable of participating in sophisticated value chains, particularly in mining services, manufacturing, agro-processing, energy, tourism, technology and financial services.
Sixth, Government procurement and industrial policy should be designed, within transparent and competitive frameworks, to encourage local firms to develop the capacity to become internationally competitive suppliers.
Finally, we must hold our enterprise-development institutions accountable not simply for the number of businesses they assist but for the growth, productivity, investment, exports and employment generated by those businesses.
Perhaps the most uncomfortable question we should ask ourselves is this: If Botswana’s universities were to produce graduates who were perfectly aligned with every conceivable industry requirement tomorrow, would our businesses suddenly expand, invest, establish new production lines and employ thousands of additional people?
I suspect not.
The graduates would still confront an economy in which private-sector employment growth has been weak, productive industries remain insufficiently diversified, businesses struggle to access finance and many enterprises have not developed the capacity to scale.
This should make us reconsider the way we frame the unemployment debate. We must certainly improve our education and training systems. But we must equally, if not more urgently, address the structural weaknesses that prevent our businesses from growing.
The central question is not simply whether our graduates are ready for work. It is whether our economy is creating enough work for the talent we are producing.
Botswana needs more than entrepreneurs who start businesses. It needs business people who build enterprises. It needs companies that grow from two employees to twenty, from twenty to two hundred, and from two hundred to thousands. It needs indigenous enterprises that move beyond survival, enter new markets, develop new products, invest in technology and become competitive regional and international players.
We cannot build a diversified economy on the foundation of businesses that do not grow. We cannot create meaningful employment without expanding enterprises. Botswana’s unemployment problem is to a significant extent, rooted in the failure of the productive economy to expand.
The time has come to focus the national conversation on unemployment woes on both the preparedness of our graduates for the real work environment and the inability of our businesses to grow. I am convinced that Botswana’s economic transformation challenge lies largely on the failure of business people to grow their enterprises.
David Norris is University of Botswana Vice Chancellor
