This was revealed at the Women in Built Environment conference held last week. The gathering brought together female titans of industry with expertise in finance, law and construction.
The main goal of the conference was to infuse innovation and discover the value of women as builders of a better world, through sharing a collective heartbeat with a main focus on business continuity. Delivering keynote address, Letlole La Rona CEO, Kamogelo Mowaneng said it was time to reconstruct the foundations of the construction industry in a bid to allow more women who now have diverse expertise in the industry to gain more space.
“It’s time to reshape the construction industry,” she said. “We cannot continue to ignore half of humanities’ bright population, women, whose skills remain untapped.” Mowaneng further said it was important to get rid of barriers that impede women from participating in the construction value chain, as this will forge a way for inclusion and shared economic gains in the country.
“Let’s dismantle barriers and challenge the status quo because it is our duty to future generations to come. “I say this because we are not just women laying brick and mortar; we are the very machinery of society that designs the very places where the future of this nation will be forged,” she said. Deliberating during a panel discussion, Botswana Development Corporation principal investment officer, Katso Gaobakwe said as women forge a way forward together in construction, it is important for them to enter into partnerships that make financial sense.
“As companies partner, it is important for those partnerships to be a win-win situation on both sides. The financial reward must be satisfying to both parties. I say this because too many times people make proposals to financial institutions that don’t just make financial sense to both parties,” she said.
Gaobakwe further advised that as women eye projects in the construction industry, before approaching lenders they must ensure that proper feasibility is carried out. She said in her experience, financial institutions are often burdened with proposals that lack feasibility reports that prove the financial prospects of their projections.
