Govt working to close digital divide - Molale

BABOKI KAYAWE
Staff Writer | Tuesday October 4, 2011 00:00

 

'Challenges in ICT are many, especially for countries of our development stature that are mainly factor-driven or just transiting to efficiency-driven economies,' Molale said.

He was speaking at a Botswana Information Technology Society (BITS) training forum for ICT professionals in the private, parastal and government sectors on a new system for Internet addresses called Inter Protocol version 6 (IPv6).

The training forum, which attracted 42 participants, was held in partnership with the BotswanaPost at the Gaborone International Convention Centre recently.

Molale noted that capacity of the current system of allocation of Internet addresses, bandwidth or connectivity for both intra and Internet was a challenge, as was ensuring that laws recognised electronic documents and transactions. 

'(Nevertheless,) the digital divide - that is, the gap between people who have access to the Internet and those who do not - must be closed,' he urged.

Though there may be many problems, they are not insurmountable, he said, and called for preparedness as an imperative strategy. 'Let us prepare ourselves by ensuring that we build the capacities of our people.'

Molale encouraged the participants to match this initiative with high learning agility. He spoke against a common practice of ICT leaderss spending on advertising to attract customers when they should be training their employees on e-service skills, technologies and attitudes.    Training was no longer an option because several studies had indicated the positive impact of ICT growth on the economy. As the importance of ICT increased, he said, so did the need to adopt underlying measurement parameters.  The training was for ICT professionals in Botswana and the SADC region to build capacity with respect to IPv6, and to make sure that Botswana was ready for the switchover. 

The current system of allocation for Internet addresses, IPv4, has been in use since the birth of the Internet. However, IP addresses are currently bordering on depletion, hence the imperative to move to the new system of allocation, IPv6, which has more IP addresses than the current one.

It is offered by AfriNIC, a non-governmental and not-for-profit membership-based organisation composed of Network Operators and Internet Professionals from the whole African continent and guided by a self-governing principle.

AfriNIC's vision is 'Spearheading Internet Technology and Policy Development in the African Region.'