The complaint was raised by several entrepreneurs at last week’s Local Manufacturing Summit held in Gaborone. The Summit provided a platform for entrepreneurs to air their grievances and to communicate their market handicaps to an array of institutional investors and public legislators.
This follows a series of high level conversations as the entrepreneurship space seeks to align itself with the recently announced Mindset Change campaign announced by President Mokgweetsi Masisi.
When deliberating during a panel discussion, Sebu Mokgwe, the founding director of Sweet Sensations, said the process of getting locally made products onto supermarket shelves is cumbersome with rigid processes that are not economically friendly. Sweet Sensations is a local chocolate manufacturing company that specialises in premium handcrafted chocolate.
“Listing in retail outlets is a challenge. “It takes time to get products to market and there seems to be a resistance to absorb locally made products,” she bemoaned.
Mokgwe further said that even when local products manage to get shelve space in retail outlets, they are usually relegated to “second class spaces” that are not prime for capturing customer attention.
“Premium spaces in retail include spaces that are at the eye level of the customer and these are usually crowded by international products while the local products are usually found in spaces where the customer has to bend or stoop to get a product,” she said.
National Agro processing Plant CEO, Metlha Mangwane said despite complaints over the cold shoulder given to local products, manufacturers from Botswana have a responsibility of ensuring that they keep enhancing their capacity to compete and challenge the dominance of imported products.
“It is also important to continue working on branding and consistent supply of products to ensure high levels of competence and quality controls so that our products can challenge imported products,” she said.
Mangwane further said the public procurement process must be revamped to have a more positive outlook of local products. She added that these processes must encourage the purchase of locally made products as this is the only way to encourage entrepreneurship in the country.
“We must also monitor retail stores to ensure that they list locally manufactured products,” she added.
