Botswana Basketball Association (BBA) and Botswana Tertiary Student Sports Association (BOTESSA) recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which will see the two organizations join forces to promote the development of the sport. Speaking during the unveiling of this four year partnership, the presidents of the two organizations emphasized that the agreement will bridge the gaps that existed between the two organizations in terms of development, technically and administratively.

According to BOTESSA President, Keorapetse Setlhare, this agreement will help them accelerate their development agenda within the local sport and enable them to fare better at the World University games.

“As you may be aware, Basketball is one of the codes that we have been struggling to have teams from, as the federation, we considered the possibility to sign this memorandum of agreement and enhance basketball development. We have been struggling, and as a code, Basketball has also been struggling at national level, so we found it fit to join forces and improve the current situation; through this agreement we will harmonize our development programmes,” Setlhare revealed.

Basketball has been played in few universities across the country, mainly Gaborone and Francistown. Setlhare highlighted that with this agreement, there will be more engagement and participation in the sport, more especially 3x3 basketball.

BBA President Boineelo Hardy said the agreement will add meaningful contribution to their development agenda, more especially the training of officials and administrators. Furthermore, the agreement will see the two organizations share resources to hold competitions.

“We will provide Botessa with technical support to help develop the sport and this will increase our human resource because we will train their coaches and administrators. This programme will also afford some of our athletes at tertiary level an opportunity to remain and engage in competitive boxing,” she shared. "BOTESSA institutions are much more wide spread across the country. Also, the big thing is that; the age group under BOTESSA is mainly under 23 which is a prime age for an athletes, so for us to have a pool of athletes at that age is satisfactory,“ Hardy stated and added that It is more growth for them as there has been having leakage more especially at club level as there were no options for their athletes at tertiary level to play basketball. "So we lost athletes to other sporting codes, our clubs will now benefit a lot from this agreement and BOTTESSA will also compete better at their world games, which is also a plus for us,” BBA president added.

Setlhare further highlighted that, they are working on having an implementation committee which will comprise of the two organizations’ technical departments. He also added that they (BOTESSA) identified grey areas of developments within their different sporting codes and therefore opted to sign MOU’s with the national federations to bridge the gap.

“The most important thing is to see the growth of basketball; we are going to offer them our facilities and equipment. There will also be a well-coordinated schedule in terms of holding competitions between the two organizations to allow the two bodies to fully work together for the betterment of the game,” BOTESSA president concluded.