Political Literacy for Women’s Empowerment in Botswana: A Feminist Perspective

This article serves to illuminate that Botswana’s political landscape in the last 49 years has been very dramatic in the trend of women’s visibility in cabinet and parliament. Post independence trends indicate non-existence of women in the first Botswana parliament, a gradual increase in the number of women in parliament during the 1990s, ranging from 5 to 8, and a sharp collapse in the last decade to only 6 in 2014 (Botswana Gazette, 2014). Women, just like men, need to be groomed to be politically literate and aggressive to make a transition and compete with their male counterparts for parliamentary and cabinet seats. Women’s political illiteracy and history of being invisible in Southern African arliaments, particularly the highest decision-making organ of the Government of Botswana, is evident, based on numbers. Politics has remained a male province, with very few women as cabinet ministers or members of parliament. Based on an analysis of trends in the political landscape in Botswana, political ethnography, historiography and the Critical Third World Feminist Theory, the authors argue that lack of political literacy and patriotism are major sources of women’s failure to make it to parliament. These pose implications for accelerated role of Adult Continuing and lifelong education of women in politics to raise their level of political literacy

Vulnerability and Risk Assessment in Botswana's Bobirwa Sub - District: Fostering People - Centered Adaptation to Climate Change

In November 2015, ASSAR’s (Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions) Southern Africa researchers from the University of Botswana (UB), University of Cape Town (UCT), University of Namibia (UNAM) and Oxfam, conducted a two-day Vulnerability Risk Assessment (VRA) in order to bring stakeholder groups closer to ASSAR’s work. Based on the findings, the aim was to reassess ASSAR’s priorities. The workshop was attended by various government officials, Village Development Committee (VDC) members, local community members, and representatives from farmer committees

Vulnerability and risk assessment in Botswana's Bobirwa sub-district fostering people-centred adaptation to climate change

Synthesis and analysis reportThis report outlines the findings of a Vulnerability Risk Assessment (VRA) exercise carried out in Eastern Botswana in the village of Bobonong in Bobirwa sub–district in the context of the project Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions (ASSAR). The workshop provided participants with key aspects in understanding and determining adaptive capacity of communities. Limited awareness of climate change is a serious issue for those who depend on land and other natural resources for their livelihood. The stakeholders, or workshop “knowledge group” indicated that crop farmers and livestock keepers are most affected.International Development Research Centre, UK's Department for International Developmen

Gendered vulnerabilities to climate change: insights from the semi-arid regions of Africa and Asia

Emerging and on-going research indicates that vulnerabilities to impacts of climate change are gendered. Still, policy approaches aimed at strengthening local communities’ adaptive capacity largely fail to recognize the gendered nature of everyday realities and experiences. This paper interrogates some of the emerging evidence in selected semi-arid countries of Africa and Asia from a gender perspective, using water scarcity as an illustrative example. It emphasizes the importance of moving beyond the counting of numbers of men and women to unpacking relations of power, of inclusion and exclusion in decision-making, and challenging cultural beliefs that have denied equal opportunities and rights to differently positioned people, especially those at the bottom of economic and social hierarchies. Such an approach would make policy and practice more relevant to people’s differentiated needs and responses