Low connectivity throttles Botswana Speaks

Gothataone Moeng | Thursday February 13, 2014 20:57

The Botswana Speaks website was launched in April last year in a pilot project covering South East South, Nata/Gweta, Maun West and Boteti North constituencies.

It was meant to give citizens better connection with their representatives and an opportunity to get involved in the national decision-making process.

Odirile Motlhale, who chairs the Parliamentary Committee on Works, Transport and ICT told Mmegi this week that the citizen uptake to the Botswana Speaks initiative has been very slow, due to the low level of internet connectivity in many parts of the country.

The initiative has thus consisted only of the website version, to which is uploaded documents regarding various issues of national interest with the expectation of an interactive discussion between the public and their MPs.

Motlhale said the committee hopes the response to the initiative will pick up with the introduction of the SMS lines. 

When the initiative was launched, the plan was to have a unique toll-free number for each constituency so that people could text their opinions and questions on a specific discussion going on in Parliament. 

This week, Motlhale said they are still in the process of talking to mobile phone companies and Botswana Communications Regulatory Authority (BOCRA) for the provision of such toll free numbers.

He said so far, one company has agreed to give specific numbers the public can use, but said they are still ironing out the issue of whether the text messages will be sent free of charge. “We haven’t finalised discussions on that but we wish it to be free,” he said.

He hopes that the discussions with the companies and the implementation of the SMS interaction will be finished by March this year.

The Botswana Speaks project, which at the time of its launch was said to have cost P6 million, is part of the e-parliament strategy, which encourages the use of ICT to serve the electorate. The project was co-funded by Swedish International Cooperation Agency (SIDA),  Stockholm University, GOV2U and the Parliament of Botswana.