Africa-Press – Botswana. Botswana is moving in the direction of digitalisation, which has been identified as a pivot point to remove wastage expenditure.
In an engagement with the media on the sidelines of the US-Africa Business Summit on Tuesday, President Advocate Duma Boko said it was equally important to foster openness, accountability and transparency, raising the level of confidence, faith and belief in the level of democratic principles and leadership.
He said the development would ultimately result in better service to the people. President Boko said the bulk of short-term investment would go toward digitalisation as it had the ability to deliver quality e-health, e-learning. The President said it was important to equally invest in the development of the energy sector.
“The country must be energy sufficient, therefore we need an energy transition that will enable Botswana to move away from the current reliance on 99 per cent of generating energy through fossil fuel (coal) to at least curb it by 50 per cent by 2030,” he said, adding that this would be achieved through digitalisation.
President Boko said the education system also needed an overhaul.
“We need partners with the expertise, skill, appetite to come in not for a short-term as we need to build resilient, robust, hyper-scaled data facilities that will allow on-boarding of other technologies and be spread evenly across the country,” he said.
He emphasised the importance of availing accessible network services to every citizen across the country through investors and durable partnerships. President Boko said African countries were beginning to take active steps to consolidate their efforts around the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement, which was opening up for all countries in the region, a huge market of 1.5 billion people.
“The African market on its own can trade amongst its member states (intra-Africa trade) unlocking huge value and economic potential. Once this is achieved through multi-varied approach one of which was recently launched in Lusaka, Zambia, as part of the digital free trade programme where trade would now be facilitated through technological platform. The digital infrastructure forms the backbone of this transformation,” he added.
He said at a point where Africa would be able to stand consolidated, united, it would be able to attract attention and command respect. President Boko said dealing with matters as a block as it was the case with other blocks across the world would make a strong voice and earn respect.
He added that the continent and Botswana need scalable technologies to grow, therefore the US-Africa Business Summit was a platform where government must show complete engagement with the private sector which was in a position to provide the resources needed.
He said government was to ensure that the laws, and policies were conducive for business rather than impede their efforts. President Boko said cutting edge technologies that were coming from the US were required to anchor and sustain relationships that the US had with African countries.
He said in order for Botswana to deepen its relationship with the US, it had to ensure that the Africa Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA), which was set to expire in September 2025 was reinstated, improved and advanced. President Boko said the Summit was a vital platform as it offered his government and others across the region to engage in vital engagements with the private sector and investors from the region and the US.
He said through such a forum, countries would be able to come up with strategic goals on how to engage the opportunities offered by the platform among others availing of finance and transfer of skills that will grow and diversify the economies of the continent.
President Boko said he was able to, on the sidelines of the summit engage with four companies that were ready to come and invest in Botswana. One of them is the Mitrelli Group, an international company focused on developing sustainable large turn key infrastructure projects in Africa.
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