The Trade and Industry Minister, Mmusi Kgafela this week acknowledged that Botswana, like many other African countries still falls far behind when it comes to infrastructure relating to energy and transport. He made it clear that this impedes development and achievement of the internationally agreed Sustainable Development Goals ( SDGs). ‘ This results in reduced service options and quality available to the population, particularly the most vulnerable segments ( of the society),” the Minister told an energy and transport conference in Gaborone.

However, throughout the prepared speech, the Trade Minister failed to explain fully the reasons why energy and transport infrastructure is inadequate. Perhaps, the most important thing, which the Minister failed to address is that, as a developing country, there is still so much infrastructure to be built, be it roads, clinics, power stations, railway lines among others. However, amid these competing interests, there are limited funds, as government continues to run successive deficits on poor economic growth. Government has since independence, been the main financier of infrastructure development, energy and transport included. We agree, government is supposed to provide its citizens with reliable energy and transport services, by investing in infrastructure. However, we have a strong conviction that, instead of bemoaning poor infrastructure, the Minister should instead, call upon the private sector to come on- board, and help government fund and develop infrastructure. Infrastructure is key to any economic development. What is surprising is that, there are legislative pieces that can enable the private sector to come aboard, but the problem has always been poor implementation and guidance. The Public Private Partnership policy and implementation framework ( 2009) is one such avenue which government has come up with, but it is yet to be fully utilised.

The fact of the matter is, even if government was to continue with spending on infrastructure, this will never be sustainable. Even big economies are failing in this regard. The national coffers have run dry. Reserves are yet to recover to pre- recession levels, and the mining, especially the diamond, is not looking better than it did a decade ago. This basically means that the country will continue to defer several infrastructure projects, on account of limited budget, while at the same time, the private sector, including pension funds, are awash with cash to help. PPPs, have been successful in developing infrastructure in many countries, which Botswana can benchmark on. Government, it has been proven, can never alone fund infrastructure. However, it appears that decision makers are shy to go all out and promote PPPs as a model that can be used to help improve our poor infrastructure. Even then, government can still tap into platforms such as the stock market to raise funding through bonds. Nowadays, there is what is called Infrastructural bond. Infrastructural bond is a type of bond issued both by private corporations and by stateowned enterprises to finance the construction of an infrastructure facility ( highways, ports, railways, airport terminals, bridges, tunnels, pipelines. They have proved to be successful since they are less risky than other modes of funding. As we write this, government is expected to spend a whopping P12 billion during this financial year on new infrastructure projects. These funds, could have been used on other projects, while infrastructure is funded using the private sector, which also depends on national infrastructure for growth. What is needed here is not magic, but change of mindset for those in the high echelons of power!