Botswana can transform into ICT driven economy
Pauline Dikuelo | Friday November 21, 2014 13:39
Speaking at the ongoing Global Expo Botswana, Naicker noted that Botswana needs to create an ICT economic roadmap, which she said, would help drive the economy.
“I have come across the Maitlamo ICT Policy roadmap, it has no national agenda for an ICT driven economy.
“Government needs to position ICT as the Economic Diversification Drive (EDD) initiative as it is critical in the global market,” said Naicker who has been conducting a feasibility study for Botswana to become a regional ICT hub since 2010.
Furthermore, Naicker highlighted that the ICT economic roadmap will help in the global market, as Botswana’s market is globally competitive.
She further blamed the country`s poor performance in the global competitiveness rankings on the lack of promotion of the ICT sector. “We have the infrastructure as well as about 15,000 to 20,000 unemployed ICT graduates ready to transform this country into a digital economy.
“All we need now is the engagement of the stakeholders and the government to address this issue, ” she said.
She also called on other parastatals and banks to help finance the ICT projects as she applauded the Citizen Entrepreneurship Enterprise Authority (CEDA) for financing ICT companies and urged Botswana Investment Trade Centre (BITC) to promote ICT exports.
For his part, the Chief Executive Officer of Botswana of Fibre Networks (BoFiNet) Mabua Mabua noted that the government needs to stimulate and adopt ICT as a critical economic driver.
He emphasised that already the government has invested heavily on the undersea cables, which he said would make it easy for Botswana to transform into a data centre hub.
“There is a lot of data that can be stored in the data centre from the economy, health, and even tax information.
“This information is critical for the transformation of the economy, so investing into a Data Centre Hub will be a good business idea,” he said.
He also highlighted that Data Centres are worth investing in, as they are critical in growing the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO).
Further Mabua emphasised that every organisation needs to take outsourcing seriously. The National ICT policy, Maitlamo was established about 11 years ago with a clear and compelling roadmap to drive social, economic, cultural and political transformation through the effective use of ICT.
The policy complements and builds upon Botswana’s Vision 2016 and provides many key strategies essential for achieving Botswana`s national development targets.
One of its objectives is to turn Botswana into a regional ICT Hub so as to make the country’s ICT sector globally competitive.