The Botswana Agricultural Sciences Professionals Association (BASPA) has urged the government to regulate the agricultural profession to address the high unemployment rate among agriculture graduates.
This call was made after the recent peaceful protests by agriculture graduates demanding government intervention to address their unemployment concerns.
The graduates have also accused the Botswana University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (BUAN) of being irrelevant.
BASPA president Mbiganyi Taka stated in an interview that BASPA strongly believes that a significant part of the unemployment problem stems from the lack of regulation in the 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 worked tirelessly with different stakeholders to find solutions to this national problem in the past seven years of existence,” 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 utilise their skills and knowledge.
To address these issues, Taka said BASPA has recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with BUAN. The core commitment of this relationship is to establish a comprehensive partnership that addresses the employability of agricultural graduates.
He also said the MOU focused on the relevance of the general curriculum across the agricultural qualification spectrum and addressed 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 the employability of graduates would go a long way in helping the challenged Alumni, the current students and indeed the upcoming generations who want to pursue Agriculture as a career,” said Taka.
BASPA, as a stakeholder in the agriculture sector, recommended an Agricultural Graduates Pitso. This would allow for active engagement between BUAN, graduates, and relevant stakeholders to find ways to improve the current situation. BASPA also recommended developing a comprehensive action plan, with stakeholders committing to its implementation.
Source: AllAfrica
Image Credit: LinkedIn
