08 Sep 2013

 The Vice President, Dr Ponatshego Kedikilwe has expressed concern over young people’s inability to use technology for personal development and economic empowerment. 

Officially opening the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) summit in Kasane on August 6, Dr Kedikilwe said young people would rather spend time on social networks than source information for personal development. 

“They spend most of their time on trivial issues that are of little value to their personal development as such I would like to encourage the youth to use technology for human development,” he said. He further said most Southern African Development Community (SADC) member countries had moved downwards in Global Competitiveness ICT Index. “Botswana for instance has moved from position 89 down to 96,” he revealed. 

The key indicators that contributed to the ranking were political and regulatory environment, individual usage, business and innovation, infrastructure and digital content, affordability and social impact, among others.  Despite huge investment in infrastructural services, he said, majority of people, especially in rural areas still had no access to the required services.

“More often than not, users are not able to enjoy some of the advanced services that these networks offer such as roaming mainly due to exorbitant charges that are levied on user,” he noted.  Dr Kedikilwe noted that in Botswana, there were more than three million (3 095 894) telephone users which represented 153 per cent of the population.

Close to half of the country’s population (47 per cent) were mobile internet users. Minister of Transport and Communications, Mr Nonofo Molefhi emphasised policy harmonisation between countries and active private sector participation. “Access to information communications technology (ICT) services has become a universal right and therefore must be adequately availed to citizens,” he said.

He explained that landlocked countries such as Botswana were dependent on other countries that had access to the sea and as such called for collaboration and cooperation between countries.

Mr Molefhi also decried high roaming rates and called for the Southern African region to look into forming one network to lower roaming costs for the region adding that in other countries that is already in practice. 

The GSMA is an association of mobile operators and related companies devoted to supporting the standardising, deployment and promotion of the Global Subscriber Mobile telephone system. Ends