Botswana

Chairman
Your Excellencies Heads of Government Excellencies Ministers
Excellencies Heads of Delegation Distinguished Delegates
Ladies and Gentlemen

Chairman, allow me to observe protocol as already established by distinguished delegates who spoke before me and convey warm greetings from the Government and the people of the Republic of Botswana.

The delegation of the Republic of Botswana to the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference conveys its hearty gratitude to the Government and the people of the Republic of Romania for the warm reception we have been accorded since our arrival in this historic city of Bucharest. We wish to add our voice to many who congratulated you on your appointment as Chairman of the Plenipotentiary Conference. Coming in the aftermath of COVID-19, this Conference looks up to your stewardship to realise the outcomes that the world eagerly awaits.  We have all the confidence that you will

meticulously guide the conference through its loaded three weeks agenda. Botswana pledges her unfettered support.

Chairman, Botswana is a landlocked country with a territory measuring 581 730 square kilometres, a population of just over 2.3 million people and population density of 4.1 people per square kilometre. Being landlocked with a sparse population brings about many challenges to the development of the communications sector. Therefore, the theme of the Conference ‘Connect and Unite’ offers hope for our plight.

Notwithstanding the challenge I just articulated, Botswana is making progress in line with the objectives of the ITU regarding Universal Connectivity and Sustainable Digital Transformation. At policy level Botswana has put in place ICT supportive legislative instruments including the Communications Regulatory Authority Act 2012, Cybercrime and Computer Related Crimes Act 2018, Electronic Records (Evidence) Act 2014, Electronic Communications & Transactions Act 2014

and Data Protection Act 2018.

In 2021 Government put in place the National Cybersecurity Strategy which has, among others, the objective to enhance collaboration and cooperation on Cyber Security issues at national, regional, and international level. In implementing the National Cyber Security Strategy, Botswana worked with the ITU to establish the Communications Sector Computer Incident Response Team (Comm-CIRT). Currently the country is in the processes of establishing a national CIRT.

Botswana is pursuing a digital transformation and mindset change agenda which has the objective to engender and mainstream ICTs across all sectors of the economy. Driven by His Excellency the President Dr. Mokgweetsi Eric Keabetswe Masisi, the digital transformation agenda leverages on initiatives such as Smart Botswana and the Universal Access and Service Fund to achieve countrywide meaningful universal broadband connectivity. Smart Botswana initiative mobilises all required resources to ensure connectivity of all public sector establishments and defines desirable standards to ensure quality connectivity. To this end, Government aims at modernising delivery of public services to the citizenry before 2025. Of paramount importance is the country’s ambition to graduate from

middle to high-income status through deployment of ICT infrastructure to support digital economy.

Efforts to connect all public schools to the internet and provide ICT gadgets to students are progressing in earnest. Similarly, ICT connectivity is targeted at all public institutions including health facilities and tribal administrations/civic centres countrywide particularly in rural areas. The program in place is to connect more than 500 villages to high-speed networks by 2024.

These initiatives are bearing fruits as Botswana boasts of the highest mobile penetration rates in the developing world. Mobile subscriptions reached 210% teledensity as at March 2022 with an equally impressive Mobile broadband penetration in excess of 2.4 million subscribers as at March 2022. LTE coverage covers 89% of the population.

At the rate at which we are going, I am confident that Botswana will achieve meaningful universal connectivity by 2024 as pledged during Partner2Connect Roundtable Digital Coalition discussions held during the World Telecommunication Development Conference held in Kigali, Rwanda in June this year.

Chairman, our notable progress is not without challenges.

• Botswana is very much challenged when it comes to availability of relevant local content.
• Cybercrime threatens to negate the digitalisation drive that as a country we are pursuing. We are experiencing daily threats aimed at our Critical National Information Infrastructure some of which are successful.
• Global ICT price increases and limited supply of ICT equipment occasioned by the advent of COVID-19 have affected the pace at which our digitization trajectory was intended to progress.
• Transit costs from undersea cable systems landing stations are, for us, a reality that we can never forget to highlight.

We are, therefore, looking forward to this conference where, as a collective or through bilateral engagements with individual Member States, we hope to find possible solutions to some of these challenges.

We thank you for the opportunity to share our efforts in the quest to achieving meaningful connectivity for our people and the world at large.