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News Date : 10 March, 2023

Botswana National Research Excellence Awards


The National Research Excellence Awards are directed towards Botswana’s novel approaches for promoting research and efficient knowledge generation and management as a vital resource for national development. The awards are created as a means of recognition and an incentive to both individual researchers and research groups/teams for their impactful research for national development towards achievement of the knowledge society, and hence the knowledge economy.

The objective of these awards is to recognize, reward research excellence towards sustainable research for a knowledge-based economy and to raise profile of research conducted in Botswana.

Today we interviewed Dr Tefo Force Thema who is one of the awardees.

 

In which category of awards did you win?

Early Career Researcher: This is a category awarded to a distinguished individual academic or professional staff member who is actively involved in research and is within 10 years of their latest Graduate degree. In this category I got position one (1).

How do you feel about your win?

It is one of the most exciting times in my life and fulfilling moment in my career. Being recognized nationally for the hard work that I do with passion brings about self-realization and satisfaction to have significantly contribute to humankind.

 What was your research focus?

The research focus was on innovating on new interventions and technologies that would address the global climate changes through green routes and paths. The reduction of emitted heavy metals that destroy the atmospheric ozone layer during the commercial production of energy during the extraction of energy from coal. These green approaches being simple and cheap.

How will you research contribute to BUAN and Botswana at large?

This research is very important as it puts BUAN in an excellent position as an important  contributor to transform Botswana from its dependency on natural resources to knowledge based economy. BUAN’s mandate to significantly help the Botswana Government to diversify its economy on the fact that the Government is the sole shareholder hence BUAN must play a measurable role in addressing societal mishaps.

 What would you like to say to your colleagues regarding participating in research and such awards?

Universities are naturally institutions where there must be imagination to extract relevant knowledge. Based on the above  there has to be intensive cutting edge research which has significant impact on society and the environment. It is therefore very important to carry out research and report its findings. Participating in such research excellence awards platform is critical as this is where you sell and fly your institution

BUAN would like to congratulate Dr Thema for his achievement.