24 Jul 2014

The government of Botswana’s National ICT Policy, known as Maitlamo, needs to be reviewed if it is to be in line with emerging trends in the ICT world.

The chairperson of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications, Works, Transport and Information and Communications Technology (ICT), Mr Odirile Motlhale said this when addressing a press conference  after his committee had held public hearings from July 11 to 16, 2014.

The public hearings were part of an oversight function of Parliament aimed at assessing progress on the implementation of Maitlamo which is a blue print for the roll out of ICT in Botswana. 

The ICT sector, Mr Motlhale said, was more than ready to drive ICT and have it contribute to the country’s GDP, adding that the sector expected to partner with government to implement the Policy and e-Government as they would impact on key aspects of the economy.

He expressed concern that there was low awareness on the Policy, adding that ICT was yet to be fully utilised at the level it was expected to be in Botswana.

He said the implementation of initiatives and projects that could aid the uptake of ICT by citizens were also still lagging behind. That, he said was mainly due to the fact that the implementing organs had not put in place a strategy that could assist with systematically tracking the tangible deliverables.

The objectives of the National ICT Policy, Mr Motlhale said, were to; strengthen the role of parliamentarians on ICT matters in order to improve legislative oversight; contribute to strengthened implementation of ICT policies and programmes through transparent and cohesive decision making processes at the national level; strengthen stakeholder engagement between civil society and Parliamentary Committees; and bridge the gap between country experts and national decision makers.

Mr Motlhale said the implementation of Maitlamo was characterized challenges such as equitable and universal access to ICT services and prohibitive pricing of ICTs.

Consumers and other observers have complained of higher prices and extremely low access to innovative opportunities among Botswana’s unemployed and largely youthful population.

“You will remember that we are rated among the highest in the region and globally in terms of charges that we levy on ICT services, particularly broadband and voice,” he said.

Other challenges, he said were; limited research capacity evidenced by extremely low citation of what could be the challenges or rolling out ICT’s following government approval of the policy in 2007; inadequate high level human resources to drive the e-Government coordination and facilitation of line ministries and inadequate relevance; and responsiveness by some sectors to automation of services in relation to; registration of companies, Visa approval, Omang, vehicle registration, among others, to drive the Maitlamo vision.

“We are in 2014 and this policy was passed by Parliament in 2007. Even at this stage the roll out in general still remains very low and this is almost six or seven years later. Implementation is still not impressive at all,” he added.

Furthermore, Mr Motlhale said through the outcome of the submissions that were made to the Committee on ICT implementation in Botswana it was discovered that “the kind of human resources that we have in the technical field to enable the roll out of this ICT policy or e-Government are not sufficiently qualified. We have few people who are qualified sufficiently to ensure that Maitlamo policy sees the light of day.”

He said there were also limited world class facilities and programmes in most government offices to achieve the vision of making Botswana an ICT hub, adding that ICT’s were not being institutionalised to harness foreign direct investment in Botswana. ENDS