Zimbabwe's richest man commits to providing broadband in every Botswana household
Harare, Zimbabwe (PANA) - Zimbabwe’s richest man and telecommunications mogul Strive Masiyiwa has resolved to establish broadband in every household in Botswana.
Already, Masiyiwa's telecommunication group Econet Wireless subsidiary, Liquid Telecom, an internet services firm, has a fibre network of over 60,000km that runs from Cape Town, through southern, central, and eastern African countries stretching to Cairo, Egypt.
Masiyiwa pledged his commitment to create jobs for youths in Botswana at a youth entrepreneurship town hall meeting between him and Botswana President Dr. Mokgweetsi Masisi in Gabarone, Botswana, on Tuesday.
“Your Excellency (Masisi), we were discussing a little while back about creating jobs by connecting up your cities. We went to Rwanda and your colleague President Paul Kagame said to me ‘I want jobs’. I said to him ‘President, let us put fibre in every house.’ I said ‘I tell you what, I will dig along the road and the young people can come dig to the houses but let us make a decision that says in the next five years every house should have broadband’,” Masiyiwa said.
Masisi responded to the remarks by asking the packed town hall full of youths whether they wanted something similar to what was in Rwanda to which the audience shouted an emphatic “yes!”.
“You know what, let strive and I continue talking. We think we might just be able to give it to you,” Masisi said.
The proposal made by Masiyiwa would see him and his company dig up trenches to lay fibre cables and have young entrepreneurs from Botswana form startup companies to offer services to connect those fibre lines to houses or businesses.
Masiyiwa also proposed training these young entrepreneurs with the relevant skills to form the startups with the requisite connection services. This training will include a certification at the end and have those graduates train other young entrepreneurs in what is expected to be a process to help startups be formed and thus create jobs.
Once the startups are formed, the young entrepreneurs will earn money from charging fees to consumers for their connection services between the fibre line and houses or business premises.
“We can look at water in a house or we can look at electricity in a house; well, broadband has become the third service for every house. We may not get to every house but what we want to do, because the amount of work to be done, is to fibre up every house best done by these young entrepreneurs,” Masiyiwa said.
“The reality is in today's cities like Kigali (Rwanda) and Nairobi (Kenya), almost everybody has fibre ahead of Johannesburg (South Africa) where regulation just got everybody confused so these are low hanging fruit. It is not high-tech, it is the same as putting solar panels on people’s roofs."
Earlier on during the day, Masisi hosted Masiyiwa at his offices for one-on-one pre-meetings before the town hall meeting.
-0- PANA RA 24Apr2019
