Africa-Press – Botswana. The Corporate Council on Africa breakfast roundtable that featured President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi, Nigeria’s captains of industry and top executives has been hailed a success by Assistant Minister of Trade and Industry Ms Beauty Manake.
She said the meeting, held at Abuja’s Transcorp Hilton on Tuesday, was able to attract business moguls from Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana as well as Nigerians in the diaspora and had thus assisted to create links and networks that Botswana needed.
“We were able to use the platform to tell the business community about Botswana and would like them to come to our shores to see the business climate,” she said.
Ms Manake, who was one of the speakers at the event, said in an interview that Botswana used the engagement to extend an invitation to the Nigerian business community to the US/Africa business summit to be held in Gaborone July 11-14.
Assistant Minister Manake said to date invitations had been issued to 38 African heads of state.
Ms Manake said the meeting also gave the Botswana delegation the opportunity to share the country’s corporate governance and the rule of law.
“It was important to leverage on HE’s (President Masisi) invitation by the government of Nigeria to attend the inauguration to also have an engagement with the business community who happen to be members of the Corporate Council on Africa that promotes trade in Africa,” she said.
She concurred with President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi’s concerns that Botswana’s exports to Africa’s largest economy and most populous country remained significantly low saying the state of affairs needed to be improved through diversification of products and commodities.
Nigeria, she said, remained a huge market which Botswana could tap into.
The much-touted African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTRA) agreement bolstered Botswana to trade more with Africa’s economic powerhouses such as Nigeria, said the assistant minister.
Ms Manake was also hopeful that Botswana’s ambitious transitional plan as well as the Reset Agenda would turn things around by way of closing existing gaps among them limiting infrastructure.
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