Munich — Botswana will harness its potential collaboration with Evum Motors, a German auto manufacturer, by requesting the company to set up the vehicle's assembly plant in the country.
Permanent Secretary to the President, Ms Emma Peloetletse said this in an interview following President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi's tour of the Evum Motors showroom to view the company's electronic car in Munich, Germany on Monday.
Ms Peloetletse said the country would look beyond just importing the car, but would also explore the possibility of its assembly locally because that would have even greater benefits to Botswana, among them job creation and e-mobility for the citizenry.
Even more pleasing about the car, she said was its conformity to Botswana's sustainable development prospects due to its zero carbon emissions.
"It can also be used for our sustainable development strategies, especially in the deltas where we don't want carbon emissions and also because it is less noisy it can be used in the parks for the transportation of tourists.
For us, these are some of the value chains that we can get out of this vehicle," she said.
Ms Peloetletse said the fact that some components of the vehicle such as batteries, were made from recycled material, was a plus because that too meant more value chains could be developed with respect to the vehicle.
Tying the possibility of having the car assembled in Botswana to the country's drive to hinge its growth and evolution on innovation, she said realising such a dream would edge Botswana closer to attaining its ideal of becoming knowledge-based as opposed to the present status of resource-dependence.
Minister of Communications, Knowledge and Technology, Mr Thulagano Segokgo, who formed part of President Masisi's delegation to Germany, hailed the President's invitation and participation at the annual Bits and Pretzels conference as a welcome development given government's unrelenting efforts to incorporate digitalisation and innovation into the society's fabric.
Minister Segokgo said in acknowledgment of how much Botswana could benefit from the Bits and Pretzels conference, the country would for next year's edition of the conference send young people within the innovation sphere to participate in the conference.
He said it was heartening that Batswana youth were continuing to showcase their innovative streak as evidenced by the manufacture by some of the gadgets such as cellular phones, adding that government's urgent task was therefore to help grow the numbers of such youths.
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As a take away from President Masisi's speech at the conference, Minister Segokgo said the engagement had highlighted Botswana's journey of creating and weaving in society an ecosystem of innovation and digitalisation.
Further, he said it was time that Botswana borrowed a leaf from Germany in terms of the adoption, effective and full utilisation of renewable energy sources.
"We take home several lessons from this conference, one of those being power generation using renewable energy.
Another is innovation, which resonates well with the drive to evolve into a knowledge-based society that the President is currently championing," he said.
For his part, Evum Motors founder and chief executive officer, Dr Markus Lienkamp, said engagements with the Botswana government were ongoing to identify areas of collaboration, one of which would be to have the electric cars produced in the country.
President Masisi's tour of Evum Motors and speech at the Bits and Pretzels conference were part of lined-up activities of his three-day working visit to Germany.
BOPA
