From accountant to grain farmer in Botswana

Basadi Molelekeng is among the youngest black women farmers in Botswana to have succeeded as a dryland commercial producer. She explains how she ditched her office job for agriculture in northern Botswana, and how she juggled these demands with those of a young mother. Tshiamo Tabane reports.

- Tshiamo Tabane

Basadi Molelekeng's daily commute to Kasane in northern Botswana, where she worked as an accountant, took her through the vast farmlands around Pandamatenga. As time went by, she became more and more intrigued by her surroundings and the idea of making a radical career change to farming in the area. This was in 2013.

Today, at 35, Molelekeng is a full-time commercial farmer, one of a new generation of producers in the country that can best be described as industrious, fearless and full of energy. These are exactly the traits that this landlocked, semiarid country is seeking to harness in its bid to produce more food for its people and for new markets.

SELF-TAUGHT

Molelekeng, who was born in Shoshong in Botswana's Central District, describes herself as a self taught farmer. She started dryland production on 260ha and now produces sorghum, beans and sunflower on more than 500ha. Her crop rotation also includes chickpeas and cowpeas.

She recalls that she started by answering an advertisement put out by the Chobe Land Board in Kasane calling for interested would-be commercial farmers.

"I applied for a 507ha farm in 2015, and the following year I was awarded the farm, where I'm currently farming," says Molelekeng. "It was virgin land and I had to carry out bush removal. I started by planting crops to 260ha, and the yield was good.

"The following year I continued clearing the bush until I'd finished the whole area." Pandamatenga, located some 900km north of Gaborone, has fertile black cotton soils and receives an annual rainfall of about 600mm, making it the ideal location for growing grain and other crops.

This is what led the Botswana government to start developing the area in 1984 by allocating more than 25 000ha to farmers as a way of boosting the country's food security.

Pandamatenga accounts for more than 90% of grain production in Botswana.