18 Jul 2023

Botswana’s Fourth Industrial Revolution Digitalisation Strategy commonly known as SmartBots remains a crucial catalyst in the country’s efforts towards becoming a knowledge-based economy.

Speaking on the sidelines of the US-Africa Business Summit, Minister of Communications, Knowledge and Technology, Mr Thulagano Segokgo said ICT together with the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) provided government and the private sector with possibilities of improvement in efficiency and economic growth.

On that basis, he said, the modernisation of government networks was in full swing through different initiatives to bring the country’s ICT infrastructure to a desirable state of effective and efficient service delivery.

“ICT aids our economy be it in the financial services sector, the healthcare sector, and the communications space. For individuals, organisations and businesses, we are able to be more efficient in our service delivery and lure the much-needed direct foreign investment,” he said.

Minister Segokgo said Batswana should through technology be able to shape a stronger presence and learn to grow and build their technological capacity, enhance digital literacy and buttress the technological infrastructure within their reach.

The key result area for the ICT sector was provision of universal and affordable access to ICT services in Botswana, which he said would be achieved through appropriate policy, legal and regulatory framework.

Mr Segokgo highlighted that the ministry would in the next parliamentary session present ICT policy, legal and regulatory framework to ensure that it continued to serve the nation into the future.

“The resulting framework should help take the country into the digital economy, as encapsulated in the Reset and Reclaim Agenda under digitization,” he said.

Such frameworks, he said, would facilitate the transformation of agricultural services, healthcare, and other essential services that would directly benefit the citizens of Botswana and transform the country into an investment hub of choice.

To that effect, he said government established a number of programmes and projects that prioritised digitalization and made it the third priority in the country’s Reset Agenda to unlock and enable high productivity among citizens. Ends