Entrepreneurship in Africa: Part 1 in a Series
SELIBE-PHIKWE, BOTSWANA – Just a few yards off the road to Bobonong, a village in Botswana’s Central district, Kewagamang Talampe lives at the Mokgalwana cattle post.
A strong, beautiful African hut – thatched with new grass and made of walls decorated with colorful soil – adorns her yard. She keeps her yard well-swept, with no pebbles at all. Two kraals that house her cows and goats stand nearby.
“Kibi! Kibi! Kibi!” she says, shooing the chickens away in Setswana – the local language – from her bowl of porridge, which she eats under a tree in her yard.
Talampe is the mother of five children. Instead of focusing on building her dream house in the village, she says she has lived for many years at the cattle post in order to meet her family’s daily needs. Hunger has been a constant reality.
She says her husband left her for another woman and now is too old to work. She says she must especially rely on herself these days since her children are grown up and have their own families to take care of.
“It hurts me so much to have children who cannot support me as their mother,” she says. “If I don’t work hard each day, my life will be miserable because, after all, I need to bath[e], eat and cloth[e] myself.”
Desperate to seek an alternate means of survival, Talampe says she has discovered a breakthrough. For years she has been collecting and selling firewood to travelers and others who pass by on the tarred road. She says nature’s abundant wood has enabled her to survive.
Her customers range from the villagers of Bobonong and Sefophe to those who head to Selibe-Phikwe, a mining town also in the Central district. She says that people who host parties are also good customers throughout the year. They like buying from her because she cuts only mophane wood, which produces nice coal and a pleasant smell.
She says she obtained a license that allows her to sell firewood from the local Department of Forestry and Range Resources in Selibe-Phikwe under the Ministry of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism. She says that she doesn’t cut the wood herself. Instead, she employs boys to assist her, and sometimes her husband helps when he has time.
She says there are some dark days when a day ends without any sales. But she says that overall, this business has helped her and her family to survive.
“Am grateful to God for allowing me to identify this business,” she says. “It has sustained my family over the past years.”
With poverty and hunger a constant reality here, women in rural Botswana have turned to entrepreneurship, seeking goods to sell in local markets from nature’s treasures. They say there are some challenges when it comes to safety, storage, transportation of goods and pending legislation that may restrict their collection activities in local forests. Other women say the economy has made it hard to live off the land. To encourage the women, the government has been recognizing them for their achievements, organizing empowerment programs and helping them to overcome the challenges they face in the business.
More than 30 percent of citizens here live below the international poverty line of $1.25 USD a day, according to UNICEF. But if some change are made, it is possible for Botswana to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty – goal one of the Millennium Development Goals, a U.N. initiative that countries worldwide have pledged to achieve by 2015, according to the MDG Monitor.
Onalenna Kereemang, 53, hails from Segakwaneng cattle post in the Central district. She is a married woman with seven children. Her husband works, but they no longer live together.
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