Africa-Press – Botswana. The globally hailed success story of Estonia as a digitally innovative and technologically advanced country inspires Botswana’s aspirations to be a knowledge-based society, President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi has said.
Delivering the official statement during the State Banquet hosted in honour of the visiting Estonia President Mr Alar Karis in Gaborone on Tuesday, President Masisi said Estonia had rightly earned international recognition for its ‘technologically saturated high-performance culture’, citing the country as the first to use e-voting.
Estonia also has 99 per cent of its public services available online and successful companies such as Skype, Bolt and WISE founded by Estonians while 70 per cent of Estonian kindergarten have access to robotics.
“Given this very outstanding profile of a country that exhibits a high-performance culture in many domains of life, Botswana, like many other countries around the world, is truly inspired by Estonia’s technological advancement,” President Masisi said.
This, he said, was a source of inspiration and a driving factor as Botswana pursues her digital transformation strategy and looks to leverage the experience of Estonia.
“Estonia’s success in the digital space is a great motivation to Botswana’s aspirations to become a knowledge-based economy, driven by technology, digitalisation and innovation, and being largely private sector led. These factors are key drivers for economic development and overall prosperity and we, therefore, look forward to Estonia’s insightful ideas,” Dr Masisi said.
He added that government had created institutions such as the Botswana Digital and Innovation Hub and SmartBots to lead the country’s innovation and digitalisation efforts, as the country seeks to transform to high-income status in line with the aspirations of the National Vision 2036.
“We have developed our own Digital Transformation Strategy, which is designed to take full advantage of the opportunities presented by the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” he said.
Such, he said included world-class and modern institutions, such as the Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST), Botswana Institute for Technology, Research and Innovation (BITRI) as well as the Botswana Digital and Innovation Hub, which were well primed to partner with Estonia institutions to develop products for the African market.
On the other hand, President Karis said his country was delighted to partner with Botswana since the two countries shared similarities and value systems which bode well for cooperation.
“Even though Estonia and Botswana are geographically distant, they have an identical mindset, as the similarities of our flags demonstrate.We have among the smallest population in our regions, we are in a way on the geographic edges, we hold dear the values of freedom and democracy, we believe in green solutions to the environment and we view digitisation as the future,” Mr Karis remarked.
He further revealed that he had listened intently to President Masisi’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City last year September.
He said he shared the urge for countries to respect the UN Charter for the global fight against war, hunger and poverty, as well as for African development to be predicated upon by an end to conflict on the continent.
President Karis further expressed his country’s admiration for Botswana’s posture as a peaceful nation that partook in efforts to end conflict on the continent including through sending troops for the peacekeeping mission in Mozambique.
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