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The University of Botswana has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Botswana Police Service (BPS) to help the law enforcement agency improve policing in Botswana through research and training. Vice Chancellor, Professor David Norris, signed on behalf of UB, while Commissioner of Police, Mr Keabetswe Makgophe signed for BPS during a ceremony held at BPS headquarters in Gaborone on October 12, 2021.

Speaking at the ceremony, Professor Norris said the partnership came at a time when the country was riddled with a range of security challenges that required a profound response from all stakeholders. “In relation to the security sector, it is commonly established that contemporary national security issues are diverse and the hefty challenge to mitigate them cuts across all sectors of governance,” he noted. Professor Norris said it was for that cause that UB found it critical to enter into this agreement, the central purpose of which was to enhance BPS' organisational capacity  through research and training of its strategic and operational staff. He said the partnership was long overdue and UB was ready to provide BPS with relevant and quality academic services to embolden its staff's capacity to dispatch their daily responsibilities with ease. 

In response, Mr Makgophe said the partnership was indeed a major milestone in law enforcement and a breakthrough for BPS whose mission is, among others, to promote partnerships and collaborative approaches for improved service delivery. He expressed gratitude to UB for undertaking to work with BPS in its journey of transformation. “The signing and implementation of the memorandum of understanding will ensure that BPS remains relevant in the changing landscape of modern day policing and it will also help BPS to align with government's reset agenda,” he said.

Mr Makgophe thanked UB for playing a major role in the development of BPS human resource through enrollment of officers in critical programmes such as law and criminal justice. He enumerated a number of initiatives that BPS embarked upon to try and improve its service delivery through infrastructural and staff development. “Despite these developments, the reality is that the world is rapidly changing socially, economically, politically and technologically and so is the crime situation,” said Makgophe. Consequently, he observed that such factors reshaped how police organisations did their work. 

Whilst technological advancement was a welcome development, unfortunately it had brought along negative side effects such as the shifting of crime into cyberspace hence the BPS needs new threats of cybercrime, human trafficking, money laundering and terrorism, noted the Police Commissioner. Such rapid changes in the policing environment, said Mr Makgophe, required an agile organisation with adequately trained and proactive officers who were able to quickly adapt and respond to the changing policing demands. “We believe that in collaborating with UB, especially in the areas of human capital development, research and development, monitoring and evaluation, and ICT we have formed the right partner towards the realisation of our aspirations as espoused in Vision 2036,” he emphasised.