Leading the digitisation agenda
Lewanika Timothy | Thursday October 2, 2025 09:49
Mmegi: Digitisation means different things for different industries and for different players in the economy. Maybe we could just start by saying what is digitisation in the banking industry, what does it look like and what shape and form does it take within the corridors of the banking industry?
Makhupe: For us, the way we look at it is really around transforming our largely manual interventions and interactions with customers into secure digital platforms. And in the broader context, it means taking advantage of the digital infrastructure that exists or motivating for the right digital infrastructure to be in place. It also looks at “how do we bring everybody into the digital context?”
So we then think about where we find our customers from a digital perspective, because not all of them are going to be on the same platform. Some will find in an SMS environment as we contact our customers, others are going to be on social media.
So to us, it really means how we support our customers where they are, how we find them where they are, and to what extent the current digital platforms are as inclusive as possible.
Mmegi: Digitization has been the talk within many industries for many decades now, but when you zone into countries like Botswana, it seems to be a process that is lagging, compared to our counterparts such as South Africa. What could be the reason?
Makhupe: Our internet penetration in Botswana is actually amongst the highest at 81.4% of the eligible population.
If we also compare with, peer countries, our penetration rates are actually quite high. So I guess from a mobile connection perspective, I think the mobile connections are estimated to be about two per person relative to our population. So one could argue that there is good momentum in terms of digital connections.
However, a lot more can be done. So 81% still says there is a portion of the population that not well-footed. But it’s still a pretty good statistic. So our perspective is that this is a journey, and the progress in Botswana has actually been quite good. We do appreciate that there are some impediments though such as infrastructure gaps.
We don’t have internet everywhere across the country. We also still have digital literacy issues. And Botswana internet relative to other countries is still considered to be not quite cost-effective; it’s not cheap to actually access the internet. We see those as opportunities if we were to remove some of those impediments to access to internet.
For me, the biggest issue is digital literacy. What do we use the internet for? We use it for Facebook. How do we demonstrate the value that digital connection can actually bring to our economy?
At Bank Gaborone, we have introduced the wallet and also enabled our SMEs across the country to be able to receive payments. So it doesn’t matter whether you are a micro SME or one person who’s selling goods from their booth, we have enabled you to be able to receive payments and you can just do that via your phone.
Mmegi: Now that you have mentioned SMEs, when you look at other markets like your East Africa, West Africa markets, there has been a drive and push to tap into the SME market and help them bank better, bank safer. Where would you say that the rate of adoption is for you as a bank and as an industry in terms of the growth patterns? Is it growing as fast as other markets or like you are saying there still needs to be more education?
Makhupe: I think there is need to do more education and I don't think the onus is just on the SMEs to adopt technology. I think everybody needs to play a role. I think starting with government, making services available online and ensuring that people can pay for those services online is a very good first step. I think the government needs to be deliberate about digitalising all its services, both from an access perspective as well as a payment perspective.
Mmegi: What other opportunities open up when both governments, as you rightly suggested, invest in digitisation? What opportunities really open up in the market for both government and the private sector when we now have a connected economy?
Makhupe: So some of the ideas that we actually seen come to fruition with the visibility of SMEs is being able to connect businesses. So the creation of effective marketplaces, as an example, is going to come from being able to have that data. So being able to connect somebody who has the need for a particular service and another party who provides the service, it happens once we have the data.
And that data is going to come from the transactional footprint that the customer actually has. So it opens up the marketplace widely.
So it opens up a much wider market than if I just focus on the local economy. And like I said, I think the biggest gain in my view is being able to use data to profile that customer to enable them to access funding. Because for them to be able to grow, they want the funding.
Mmegi: Inclusivity is a word you keep repeating in all of your answers, and I want to understand why it’s such a big thing for the banking industry to keep talking about it. Every bank talks about digitalisation for inclusivity; why is inclusivity such a big thing for the industry?
Makhupe We don’t want to leave anybody behind, right? So the benefit of inclusivity, in my view, is if you include as many activities that happen in the economy as possible, it gives you data, and data enables you to solve more accurately for customers. So right now, if you take a customer who never banks, nobody knows what that business actually does.
So if you’re with a customer and they primarily just use cash, it means their business has no digital footprint and because it doesn’t have any digital footprint, this means nobody’s going to know what solutions they actually need.
Any cashflow means that they have, it means they’re excluded from accessing services like credit. It means we don’t have a credit record because we don’t have enough information about the business.
It also means if there’s a tender out and you have to prove that you actually have experience in that particular area, your banking track record can actually give you that confidence. That footprint shows how your business operates. So it’s critical for providing data because data is the gateway to many, many services that benefit the customer as well as enable the bank to also solve for customers.