21 Jul 2022

Participants at the US-Africa Business Summit have underscored the importance of narrowing the digital divide, post COVID-19 in an endeavour to enable economic transformation in the continent.

During a thematic discussion on Narrowing Africa’s Digital Divide in a Post COVID on Wednesday, they agreed that the US multinational companies should invest in digital dividends across the continent for holistic connectivity of African citizenry.

They said the COVID-19 era presented widespread disruption in the history of mankind, when communication moved to online platforms, including healthcare delivery to patients.

In that regard, they called for connectivity support to be able to deliver goods and services in healthcare, education, finance, commerce, governance, and agriculture as well as to ease communication across the continent. Giving an account of how Botswana was faring in narrowing the digital space, Chief Executive Officer of Botswana Institute for Technology, Research and Innovation, Prof Shedden Masupe said Botswana Digital Transformation Strategy (SmartBots) has made headway in supporting the country’s goal of transitioning to an upper-middle-income country to high-income status by 2036.

He was of the view that the systems to transform the country into a digitalized space were slowly trickling in due to government’s robust plan to transform the economy into using the digital space.

This, he said had been possible through the country’s overarching ambition that was espoused in Vision 2036 which compels government’s machinery to do things in a digitalised manner.

He said through the ambition, government had been able to put instruments in place such as the national ICT Policy called Maitlamo Broadband Strategy which aimed to improve ICT infrastructure and to act as a trigger to many ICT related initiatives across all segments of society.

Coupled with that, he said the Universal Access Fund was another instrument in place that ensured that ICT infrastructure was available for digitisation space. Prof Masupe stated Botswana’s ambition to digitalise dated as far back as the management of HIV/AIDS when a digital instrument for data collection system was deployed to facilitate the health system across the 10 districts.

“It is because of this initiative we were able to narrow the digital divide in our districts,” he said.

For her part, the US Trade and Development Agency Director (TDA), Ms Enoh Ebong said America was committed to accelerating businesses in the digital space in the African continent.

She said TDA was prioritising Africa in digital infrastructure and was revitalising and strengthening partnerships in different countries

She said the organisation had further announced its intention to invest in infrastructure in the digital space to digitalize the economy. 

“Through the Prosper Africa initiative, we are implementing that through our advisory support to see which projects can be financed to get connectivity,” she said.

She said the initiative was focusing on governments to bring partners on the ground in Africa in the private sector to help prepare projects from World Bank and other multilateral institutions. She said the initiative called Access Africa was also designed to expand the last mile connectivity and lower the cost of data transmission in rural areas.

This, she said was also meant to prepare for the Africa Continental Free Trade Area to ensure that connectivity was uninterrupted in the African regions. 

Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Axxess, Mr Niyi Olajide said the future of the healthcare system depended on holistic connectivity as the traditional healthcare system experienced challenges in the wake of COVID-19. In that regard, he said important partnerships should be forged by the private sector and governments in the US Africa context to ensure rural communities had access to connectivity.

“We need best expertise to move things seamlessly across the continent,” he said. ends