19 May 2016

The permanent secretary in the  Ministry of Transport and Communications Mr Neil Fitt has said that the ongoing International Conference on the Internet, Cyber Security and Information Systems ((ICICIS) should be taken seriously as it has the potential to positively address challenging issues affecting Internet users in Africa.

Officiating at the meeting in Gaborone, which has attracted participants from Africa and overseas, Mr Fitt said the conference had come at an opportune time as the number of people in Botswana who participate in cyberspace is exponentially growing.

He said statistics showed that the number of people with access to Internet had steadily increased over the years to 15 per cent of the population. 

He attributed the growth to massive government investments in infrastructure development aimed at strategically connecting Botswana to the rest of the world through the undersea optic cable, which traverses the eastern and western coasts of the African continent. 

He explained that the optic cables offer a combined 15.4 terabyte for transacting, socialising and accessing public services online.

However, Mr Fitt said the government is highly perturbed by escalating incidents of criminal attacks against innocent people in cyber space. 

He regretted that people across the globe suffer a range of online criminal activities such as financial fraud, drugs, human trafficking and terrorism.

He said while these crimes have existed offline for centuries, the cyberspace has provided a fertile seedbed for them to flourish by masking their perpetrators and increasing their pool of potential victims. 

He warned that cyberspace has become a tool for criminals to siphon cash from the reservoirs of “our bank without a sound, to halt our economic activities by press button and lure our children into a trap of seduction and slavery”. 

Mr Fitt therefore said the fight against cyberspace requires a cohesive and coordinated approach, noting that no nation can win the fight alone because of the intricacies and complexities of investigating and resolving the phenomenon. 

In view of this, he said, countries are therefore mandated by circumstances to stand in solidarity against perpetrators. 

He said, “In all our nations the cyberspace has become a critical resource for fostering economic developments. Nations have started to transact with each other using online platforms. Internet has become the primary medium to pay goods and services across continents and states”.

Many speakers from various cyberspace background are expected to address the conference.