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Background

The Government of Botswana is committed to citizen economic empowerment. This is evidenced by the various programmes and policies that have been put in place since Independence to encourage citizens and citizen companies to participate in the mainstream of the economy. These initiatives are outlined in the various National Development Plans and other policy pronouncements. Although they might not have been referred to as citizen economic empowerment policies or entrepreneurial development programmes they are, for all intents and purposes, solid citizen empowerment programmes.

The Government established the Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA), in response to the recommendations from both the National Conference on Citizen Economic Empowerment (NCCEE), held in July, 1999 in Gaborone and the 4th Evaluation of the Financial Assistance Policy (FAP) which was completed in May 2000. Both reports of the NCCEE and the FAP Evaluation called for support for business development to promote citizen entrepreneurship, which was found lacking among a large majority of citizens. NCCEE also recommended that the citizen economic empowerment schemes be consolidated and the financial assistance be provided as loans.

The Government is desirous of implementing a framework that recognizes CEDA as an empowerment entity with different financing products to address different needs and opportunities to the advantage of citizen enterprises. CEDA will further foster entrepreneurship through financing projects which will not be ordinarily funded by other institutions such as commercial banks.