University of Portsmouth celebrating 17-year partnership with African police force

From left - Mr Mantswe, Deputy Commissioner; Mr Phonchi, Senior Assistant Commissioner Botswana Police Service, Dr Julian Parker-McLeod and Dr Nick Pamment, University of Portsmouth.

The University of Portsmouth have celebrated 17 successful years of partnership with the Botswana Police.

To mark the occasion, three senior officers from the landlocked country in southern Africa 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 UoP.

Dr Nick Pamment, from the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, said: ‘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.’

As well as celebrating successes, the visitors also discussed future collaborations. Mr Mantswe revealed: ‘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, the latest developing trend.

‘We hope to collaborate with the University to develop capabilities around the investigation of this type of crime.’

Mr Phonchi added: ‘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 a diploma level.’

Chris Chang, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Global Engagement and Student Life) at the UoP, said: ‘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.’