The recently released Afro Barometer report by Star Awards shows that unemployment is the most important problem facing Batswana. With up to three responses per respondent, the barometer conducted between July-August 2022 showed that 50% of Batswana cited unemployment among their priorities.

The Afro Barometer report further pointed out that unemployment is the most important problem ahead of others such as crime and security, management of the economy, corruption, health, wages, incomes, salaries, water supply, infrastructure/roads, poverty and land.

Batswana were asked to state the most important problems facing the country that government should address. Unemployment rate, which is currently at 26%, has been worrisome with the youth as the most affected.

Meanwhile, the recently released report by the Presidential Commission of Inquiry on Constitutional Review shows that Batswana had submitted that the government should consider unemployment allowance something that the Commission itself did not recommend. Many jobs were lost as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and before that a huge challenge of youth unemployment already existed. Currently, the youth make up 60% of country’s population. The Statistics Botswana 2022 Population and Housing Census results show that the population of Botswana has increased from two million in 2011 to 2.3 million in 2022.

Every year thousands of graduates join the ranks of the long-term unemployed who have lost their economic lifeline and had never worked a day in their life. In the constitutional review report, Batswana also suggested that there should be a clause in the Constitution, which will stipulate the amount of money that unemployed youth will be paid every month.

President Mokgweetsi Masisi shocked the nation last month when he failed to address the issue of unemployment in his State of the Nation Address (SONA). The wide-ranging speech that lasted nearly two hours, examined many pressing issues confronting the nation from Gender-Based Violence (GBV) to corruption. One of the direst being unemployment, however, somehow escaped his attention. In Masisi’s 60 pages long speech, he only mentions the word unemployment once.

Although he acknowledged that the people who are mostly affected by unemployment are the youth, Masisi was quick to put the blame on the COVID-19 pandemic, which he says “aggravated the afflictions of poverty, inequalities and unemployment”. He is the same man who promised to tackle the issue of unemployment during his inauguration as Botswana’s fifth president on April 1, 2018.

“One of my top priorities as the President of this country will be to address the problem of unemployment, especially amongst the young people who constitute the majority of our population,” Masisi said at the time.

The latest Afrobarometer report comes at a time when the COVID-19 has already exacerbated the divide between those who are employed and those who are unemployed.

Afrobarometer is a pan-African, non-partisan survey research network that provides reliable data on African experiences and evaluations of democracy, governance and quality of life. The Afrobarometer team in Botswana, led by Star Awards, interviewed a nationally representative sample of 1,200 adult Batswana in July-August 2022. A sample of this size yields country-level results with a margin of error of +/-3 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. Previous surveys were conducted in Botswana in 1999, 2003, 2005, 2008, 2012, 2014, 2017 and 2019.