Sylvester Wapitso
27 October 2008
Francistown — The Botswana Accountancy College (BAC) opened its campus in Botswana's second city in a colourful ceremony here last Thursday.
Welcoming guests, BAC Executive Director Michael Lesolle said the campus, which is currently housed at Barclays Plaza in downtown Francistown, was an important milestone in making education accessible to Botswana's northern population.
"We want to accord the people of peripheral areas around the city an opportunity to get quality education," Lesolle said. "Sending students abroad is expensive, and it is through decentralising our services that we want to be the centre of excellence in Southern Africa."
Delivering the keynote address, the Assistant Minister of Finance and Development Planning Guma Moyo said it was in the best interests of the government to speed up implementation of Vision 2016 through NDP10. The Botswana Accountancy College would help in the realisation of an educated, informed, prosperous, productive and innovative nation, Moyo said, paraphrashing Vision 2016.
"The college's strategic presence in northern Botswana shows that its objectives are aligned with government's decentralisation plans of diversifying economic activities from certain areas, Gaborone included," he said.
Moyo underscored the importance of human capital and skills development. "There are mining and various tourism and hospitality service industries around," he continued.
"They need to invest in skills development for them to flourish and the college's decentralisation programme is commendable as it will give young Batswana, in the northern part the country, a chance to get an education."
Moyo encouraged BAC to produce as many graduates as possible, saying there was a high demand for accountants locally and abroad. He said in that way, the gap between the demand and supply of accountants would be bridged as BAC increased its intake and introduced programmes it did not currently offer.
He commended BAC for aiming at transforming from a college for the training of accountants to a business school, saying it was positioning itself to be the centre of excellence in southern Africa."The transition strategy requires capital investment in infrastructure as the college aspires to develop entrepreneurs," the minister said.
"Entrepreneurial development is needed to enhance economic growth. The future business school will come up with additional programmes to encourage innovation.
However, he encouraged BAC to devise a programme of on-the-job training, which he described as the best form of learning. "In-house training courses for individual companies and organisations go a long way in giving beneficiaries hands-on skills as they (work)," he explained.
The minister said the government had made a substantial budget allocation to tertiary education in order to speed up capacity building initiatives in human capital. It was costly to send students for studies abroad, hence the need to promote the development of tertiary education locally and to offer quality programmes.Moyo commended the college for the good performance in the international arena, saying that was the sign of a service provider moving in the right direction. "The college acts locally but thinks globally," he said.
"BAC plays a meaningful role as it teaches students the significance of complying with corporate governance codes, avoiding corporate scandals and adhering to business and professional ethics," he said."The Francistown campus comes at a better time when there is a surge of economic development in the northern part of the country and it is encouraging to learn that student enrolment has risen considerably from 45 to 250 since the institution started."
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Mmegi/The Reporter. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
