The University of Botswana and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development have signed a three year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
Through the MoU government will be able to utilise expertise at the University in policy development, analysis and critique.
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Mr Solomon Sekwakwa said at the signing ceremony on November 19, 2018 that the MoU acknowledged that while UB had a well-established fully functional training and research capacity, the ministry had limited capacity to do fully-fledged research.
The MoU, therefore, signified formal collaborative working relationship between the ministry and UB in areas of economic research, macroeconomic forecasting, policy analysis and capacity building in wealth accounting and natural capital accounting.
Mr Sekwakwa said the arrangement would help in containing costs of hiring international expertise when UB was well endowed with experts who could do a good or even a better job in helping government in such areas.
In addition, it would help in building local capacity, he said, noting that during international events they would be able to have UB experts accompanying them to help in policy articulation and analysis.
Speaking on behalf of UB, Deputy Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration, Mr Mendel Nlanda, said the signing of the MoU came at the right time as the University had initiated a process to establish a Consultancy Bureau.
Mr Nlanda said the University of Botswana Consultancy Bureau (UBCB) was a fundamental aspect of the University's Enterprise Strategy designed to guide the institution to generate third stream income.
"The University's Department of Economics and the Department of Environmental Science, which shall also be collaborators for purposes of this MoU, will benefit immensely from the work of UBCB," he said.