From transit corridor to digital hub: Turning Botswana’s geography into an advantage
ODIRILE TAMAJOBE | Monday November 9, 2026 18:18
However, Botswana is also not alone in facing the challenges of being landlocked. Zambia and Zimbabwe face similar needs for reliable, diverse access to international routes. A shared constraint can therefore become a shared market.
But data economics differ from physical transit. As part of Cassava Technologies, Liquid Intelligent Technologies sits within a broader ecosystem spanning connectivity, cloud, data centres, cyber security and AI. From that perspective, digital value isn’t created simply by moving traffic efficiently. It’s also created where networks interconnect, where content is hosted, where data is protected and processed, and where digital services are built.
For Botswana, this has important economic implications. When digital infrastructure and activity are located locally, the benefits include skilled employment and opportunities for local suppliers, stronger business continuity, faster access to digital services, and greater data sovereignty. They also lay the foundations for sectors such as fintech, e-government, digital health, education, AI and the creative industries to grow. Ultimately, this is an opportunity for economic diversification. Botswana can build capabilities to serve and export digital services to a regional market larger than its domestic population.
The question, then, is how Botswana can shift from a route for regional traffic to a place where it creates and retains more of that value. The solution is to give that traffic a reason to stop.
Keeping more digital value local
The more traffic exchanged within Botswana, the fewer unnecessary international journeys it needs to make, improving response times and resilience while keeping more digital activity in the country.
Botswana’s position between South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Zambia gives it the potential to connect different routes and aggregate regional demand. The more carriers, service providers, content platforms, and enterprises that interconnect locally, the stronger the case for further investment in data centres, cloud infrastructure, content caching, and other digital services. A network effect begins to emerge, with participation making the market more attractive to the next participant.
From route to destination
This is what distinguishes a transit corridor from a digital hub. A corridor provides a route. A hub gives networks, data and digital businesses a reason to stop, interconnect and create value.
Liquid Botswana is already developing the infrastructure with more than 1,170 km of fibre across the country, including the 730 km A1 backbone running from Ramatlabama to Ramokgwebana through major centres such as Lobatse, Gaborone, Mahalapye, Palapye and Francistown. Together with fibre across Botswana and the Gaborone Metro Ring, it links long-haul regional capacity to where enterprise and public-sector demand originates.
But fibre alone doesn’t create a hub. Enterprises need connectivity, cloud, and cyber security capabilities that let them digitise securely and reliably. Carriers and service providers need wholesale capacity, cross-border reach, route diversity and efficient interconnection. Data centres, cloud platforms and content providers need sufficient local demand, reliable power, technical skills and confidence in the regulatory environment. Liquid extended its offering to include cloud and cyber security services for customers in the country, building on its fibre backbone.
The opportunity lies in bringing these elements together. A regional backbone without strong local connections remains largely a transit route. A metropolitan network without regional reach remains local. Connecting the two, and building the ecosystem around them, is what creates the conditions for digital activity to thrive.
No single company or entity can achieve success on its own. For Botswana, the public sector, the regulator, and the private sector must collaborate to set the conditions for local peering, hosting, and investment, including reliable power and regulatory certainty. Carriers, content platforms and enterprises can choose to interconnect and host in Botswana rather than offshore. Over the last two decades, Liquid has proven it will leave no African behind by bringing its expertise in connectivity, cloud, and cyber security services. It will bring the same expertise to its Botswana customers, so others have demand to build on.
Measuring what actually matters
Progress should therefore not be measured only by kilometres of fibre and cross-border capacity. Botswana should also consider how much traffic is exchanged locally, how many networks interconnect within the country, data centre utilisation, improvements in latency and resilience, digital sector employment and the value of services exported to the region. Botswana already has the geographic position and growing infrastructure to play a larger regional role.
The next step is to organise the wider ecosystem around that advantage. As a result, the country becomes not only a place data travels through, but a place where networks meet, digital services are built, and regional value is created.
*Tamajobe the Managing Director of Liquid Intelligent Technologies Botswana