4IR Strategy will facilitate participation of Batswana in digital economy

Botswana must move swiftly to develop Fourth Industrial Revolution Strategy

Until Botswana develops a Fourth Industrial Revolution ( 4IR) Strategy to facilitate full participation of its citizens in the digital economy, all other attempts, however well- meaning, will be in vain.

Botswana needs to move with haste in this direction to avoid the big hawks in the international Information Communication Technology ( ICT) exploiting the loopholes in our system to cash in while citizens are reduced to mere spectators in their own economy.

For example, we must ask what have really become of the Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency’s ( CEDA) revised guidelines, which promised to finance Intellectual Property protection?

In this day and age, especially during the COVID- 19 pandemic, it has become patently clear that financial lending institutions’ model of collateral, which stressed the tangible assets such as land, buildings and livestock, is antiquated.

Covid has rendered this model completely archaic hence there is an urgent need for financial institutions to adopt IP protection, especially since the country claims to be moving towards a knowledge economy.

Fundamentally, a knowledge economy is premised on research and development ( R& D). And this is one area that Botswana is faring very poorly in.

There is absolutely no commitment, not from government or the private sector to finance research and development and this begs the question: How then can we transition to a knowledge society if research and development is not financed?

A knowledge society speaks to the knowledge capital that citizens possess – whether conventional or indigenous – while government’s role ought to be facilitating an environment conducive for this knowledge capital to thrive.

Yet we have seen how miserably our people have failed to get any assistance from government agencies despite having bankable business propositions that could thrust this country into the envisioned digital economy!

Granted there are fragmented developments aimed at accelerating the digital economy such as the construction of the Botswana Fibre Networks’ P100 million National Data Centre, which is expected to enhance Botswana’s ICT infrastructure.

But we still maintain they fall far short in that they don’t address the everyday needs of citizens.

According to Transport and Communication Minister, Thulaganyo Segokgo, the data centre infrastructure will become the strategic heart of Botswana’s networks that will drive Botswana’s Digital Transformation and Smart Bots initiative, to attract and host major regional and international ICT players such as Microsoft, Google and others.

The construction and operation of the Data Centre is envisaged to create at least 273 jobs and more jobs as the Centre becomes operational and more services are introduced such as cloud services, Internet of Things, and Software as a service.

While all this is laudable, we challenge government and the minister that such effort will be meaningless if his Ministry does not come up with a 4IR Strategy that prioritises citizen participation in the envisioned knowledge economy.

Information technology, as BOFINET Board chair, Pelani SiwawaNdai, rightly said, is the most rapidly evolving phenomenon, accelerated by the proliferation of Wi- Fi, cloud services, smart gadgets and artificial intelligence.

Yet this will remain a pipe dream until there is serious political will backed by government functionaries to support innovations by citizens.

Words can only be gauged by actions, but so far, we have seen half- hearted efforts at pushing citizen participation in the digital economy.

It appears to the ordinary Motswana that this space is reserved for international multinational corporations who boast the requisite financial wherewithal. Government must move urgently change this perception.

In the meantime CEDA must up the ante on its game and begin to finance business propositions that require IP protection, lest they be accused of sabotaging President Masisi’s knowledge economy crusade!