Provide correct information on Botswana :: Mmegi Online

The purpose of this article is to encourage, or urge, the Government of Botswana, specifically the central agency responsible for statistics, and the various sectors, to collect information, document it, and provide it to the world through relevant international agencies, so that Botswana can be properly positioned in the world when comparative statistics are published.

The information may not always project the country in a positive light, but the situation cannot be worse than it is now, certainly in the health field. Because of such initiatives as the Millenium Development Goals, countries are being continuously compared, and if a country does not collect and provide up to date information that can be validated, the International Agencies use various methods to generate figures; the commonest method nowadays being computer modelling.

I feel that the rather unfavourable figures (and many of them may not be true) on Botswana that appear in various international reports and publications may do the country a great deal of harm, whether in relation to attracting investment or in relation to tourism, or just image. What we need is that the figures used to project Botswana should be based on the best methods of data collection possible.

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