The Executive Director of the Botswana National Productivity Centre (BNPC), Baeti Molake, left Gaborone on May 28, 2013 on a five- day study mission to Japan. The mission will take place at the same time when Japan will be hosting the Fifth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD V) under the theme: Hand in Hand with a More Dynamic Africa.
BNPC said the overarching objective of the mission is twofold; to promote fraternal relations and cooperation between JPC and BNPC as well as to learn about Green Productivity (GP) and its practice under the sponsorship of the Japan Productivity Centre (JPC). The Executive Director will deliver a presentation on Botswana’s initiatives at TICAD V’s side event seminar on ‘Diffusion of Green Productivity from Asia to Africa’.
Molake is accompanied by Bonolo Sefhemo, a BNPC Research and Measurement Consultant and Babirwa Bricks Managing Director, Oral Mosedame. Babirwa Bricks is one of the citizen owned companies that have benefited from the partnership between JPC and BNPC. Through this partnership, a few local companies and public institutions benefited from the Japanese organisational continuous improvement intervention called Kaizen.
“Green Productivity promotes environmental protection and waste minimisation of the raw materials and natural resources in the manufacturing and service sectors, as well as within communities. Molake and Sefhemo will have the opportunity to observe GP approaches, applications and best practices, and explore more effective ways of making GP increase business competitiveness, as well as how to develop action plans for GP applications. There will also benefit from presentations on GP,” BNPC noted.
The initiative is part of Japan Productivity Centre’s technical cooperation on productivity improvement to African nations offered since 2006 under the support of the Japanese Government’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). Initially, the cooperation focussed on 5s, Kaizen and other practical productivity improvement activities implemented by the Japanese companies. Elimination of waste and quality improvement actives were later introduced through the initiative.
The Japanese productivity improvement activities have helped local companies in Africa (pilot companies) including Botswana to promote efficient work as well as to improve the quality of their products and services. Such an arrangement has in turn helped National Productivity Organisations (NPOs) like the BNPC in Africa to upgrade skills of their consulting staff members in the fields of management and production. Molake and his team are expected back home on 5 June 2013.
