This week the University of Portsmouth celebrated 17 successful years of partnership with the Botswana Police Service
19 April 2023 — This week the University of Portsmouth celebrated 17 successful years of partnership with the Botswana Police Service. To mark the occasion, three senior officers from the Botswana Police Service visited the University. Mr Mantswe, Deputy Commissioner; Mr Phonchi, Senior Assistant Commissioner and; Ms Mathitha, Senior Superintendent were hosted by members of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice.
The partnership started in 2006 and since then, thousands of new Botswana police officers have been trained, with support from the University of Portsmouth.
Dr Nick Pamment, from the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, said:
“It has been such an honour to host our colleagues from Botswana. It’s been an incredibly rewarding partnership which has contributed to Botswana Police Service being ranked the best police service on the African continent by the World Internal Security and Police Index report.
We’ve been able to celebrate our achievements to date and discuss how to further develop our unique partnership. It has also been a great opportunity to showcase the University and our vibrant city.”
The officers were given a tour of facilities and received presentations on the Centre for Cybercrime and Economic Crime; Police Education at the University; the Forensic Innovation Centre and the research landscape within the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice.
As well as celebrating success, the visitors also discussed future collaborations. Mr Mantswe, Deputy Commissioner, said:
“It has been a good opportunity to visit the university and discuss possibilities for further collaboration. We are particularly interested in cyber security.
“Whilst Botswana is one of the safest countries in Africa with a population of about 2.2 million, it is still a big country about the size of France, so we do have our own challenges in terms of policing both in stock theft and now cybercrime – which is the latest developing trend.
We hope to collaborate with the University to develop capabilities around the investigation of this type of crime.”
For his part, Mr Phonchi, Senior Assistant Commissioner, said:
“Through working with the University of Portsmouth, we have grown from strength-to-strength – we have been guided and responded to their guidance.
We still hope to improve even more so that we can elevate the whole training process. We now have the ambition of growing this to diploma level.”
Chris Chang, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Global Engagement and Student Life) at the University of Portsmouth, said:
“We have a longstanding valuable partnership with the Botswana Police Service. I am extremely proud of the work we have done over the past 17 years and the visit from our Botswana colleagues was a great opportunity to showcase the University and discuss exciting opportunities for the future.”
