Africa-Press – Botswana. The Gambia Ministry of Public Service’s choice of Botswana for a benchmarking mission has been described as a vote of confidence in the country’s pubic administration.
Speaking during a reception in honour of the Gambian delegation on Sunday, Minister for State President Mr Kabo Morwaeng expressed the confidence that the host organisations and departments would meet the visitors’ expectations.
“As your delegation commences its mission, one of the key institutions that will offer valuable insights of our governance is the National Planning Commission. The institution was recently set up, amalgamating various functions of national planning which were spread across different offices,” he said.
Mr Morwaeng said the Public Sector Reforms Office would also provide the delegation with the necessary insight.
The office had been engaged in the recent rationalisation of ministries, departnments and state owned enterprises to ensure alignment and reduce duplication of roles, he explained.
Turning to The Gambia’s area of strength, Mr Morwaeng said the country’s agriculture sector, with a variety of cash crops, was admirable.
He said that was an area that Botswana sought to rapidly improve to attain total import substitution and food security.
“I hear you have a lot of rice, and we have a lot of nice beef, therefore I want see Gambian rice in our supermarkets and our beef in your supermarkets,” said Mr Morwaeng.
Explaining the choice of Botswana, his Gambian counterpart, Mr Babouccar Bouy said after serious considerations, the country ‘… stood out to be the best in the area of performance research’.
He said the purpose of the study tour was to learn from the experiences of the Directorate of Public Service Management (DPSM) and other public institutions.
Mr Bouy said his country having established a public service ministry only last year, they hoped Botswana would help them find their feet.
According to the Gambian minister, also of interest to the delegation were citizen-state engagement processes, performance management systems and the National Strategy Office operations.
He called for the initiation of a system of continuous engagement, information exchange and learning between the two ministries.
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