Rampholo Molefhe
20 August 2007
Gaborone — A Need For ICT Coops For The Poor There have been reports emanating from Parliament suggesting that the Information Communications Technology policy recently passed by Parliament will amount to no more that a 'pipedream' in the words of one of the opposition members.
Perhaps so. However, the opposition is charged with much more, in this particular instance, than to pass judgement on what they perceive to be the inevitable outcome of the policy. One would have expected the opposition, or any other caring and enlightened members of Parliament, to highlight the central position of IT in contemporary international economy.
We might even suggest that the very notion of globalisation - to which the opposition and the other parliamentarians have exhibited little resistance - is in fact the result of the transformation or, to use a fancier term, the metamorphosis of crude imperialism, into a communicative phenomenon in which swift carriage of large chunks of information in an attractive format over large distances is the central process. Yes, it does appear that much of the policy attempts to embrace the concepts of 'e-government, e-mail, e-health, e-commerce' and several other 'e's. It should worry that this occurs at a time when Botswana has frightened the Batswana away from the landline telecommunications by corrupted charges for telephonic communication at the Botswana Telecommunications Corporation (BTC). Installation of telephones is expensive in its own right and computers are way beyond the reach of the average Motswana who earns thousands below the per-capita income figure of over P22, 000.
So, the most basic forms of communications that facilitate linkage to international communications or the Internet are well out of the reach of most Batswana. It is unlikely that that group of tele-communicators can afford - except by doing their shopping on the black market personified at the Gaborone Train Station and White City - that they can afford cellular access to the Internet.
But it does appear, that with rudimentary levels of literacy and access to smaller amount required for access to Internet cafes, that there is a window of hope. In other words, whilst it is true that the greater part of Botswana is by dictate of class, automatically marginalised from accessing the so-called information highway as proposed in the ICT policy, there must be some in which the people of Botswana can take the matter into their hands and find their own way into the global communications network. Presumably Batswana should be able to establish networks of communications cooperatives. By pooling resources together at community centres, football clubs, health centres, the economically disenfranchised might - only might - be able to gain access to e-mail and other Internet facilities that might help to change their state of worthlessness.
The plea here is not for empathy with the policy of the ministry of communications.
The plea is for a critique of the policy that will point a way to the larger majority that must have access to ICT, even if they do not have drinking water, nutritious food or perhaps even a household telephone.
The musicians, teachers, farmers, bankers, students and particularly the journalists' unions are expected to play the leading role in helping the larger part of civil society to access the rest of the world through the Internet.
Let us not close the doors, either through the ministry's' policy, or by its critique.
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