Botswana moves to improve rural broadband services

The government of Botswana is to implement a new five-year plan, currently dubbed the Draft National Broadband Strategy (DBNS), to improve internet access in rural areas. A report from Ventures Africa quotes Assistant Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Olebile Gaborone, as saying: ‘As part of the plan, in this financial year several initiatives have been identified which seek, amongst other things, to address issues of poor network performance, limited or lacking services and reliability.’ Details of specific projects under the DBNS have not yet been announced. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, less than 4% of Botswana’s households were subscribing to broadband services as of end-March 2014.