Link to article: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1mev5ygk0yo
This article focused on one of the new leaders in Botswana, Lesego Chombo. She was 2022’s Miss Botswana and 2024’s Miss World Africa. She is also a lawyer and now a cabinet minister with her position of Minister of youth and gender. Botswana has a new president, Duma Boko, who is the leader of the Umbrella for Democratic Change. The new government is working towards building an economy focused on youth development and entrepreneurship rather than solely diamonds so that the economy is more diverse and can grow. 60% of the population is below 35 and 28% is unemployed so there is a great push for educating the youth of Botswana to contribute positively to society. Chombo is also leading movements and ideas surrounding gender equity and equality and working on decreasing levels of gender based violence which are very common.
I think this article is very important for Botswana because it shows the future possibilities for the government and economy which will help to boost the state as a whole. I think that these decisions including the electing of this new president and appointing young women into the cabinet will help the country to become more developed and cause the civilians to have more trust in their government. I believe that young women like this can cause positive change and have society work more fluidly because more parties are involved. I think that this could set an example for surrounding, less developed countries and could help the region become more equal and stable.
I believe that Botswana will continue on this track to become a more inclusive and safe state. I think appointing women helps to show a country’s people that they care about them no matter what gender they are. I think this will give hope to many other young women in Botswana and that gender based violence will decrease as gender equality becomes a more accepted topic. This connects to class because it deals with some forms of human rights violations, specifically gender based ones where women have been historically abused and underrepresented. These kinds of human rights abuses are typically viewed as “less than” the ones that many other sub-saharan African countries deal with, but it is still important to work on the violations or abuses that each state has.