Rwanda rolls out free wireless broadband, when will Namibia follow?

An ICT bus in Rwanda

The Rwandan government last month rolled out an ambitious plan to cover 95% of the country’s landscape with free 4g broadband access. Starting with covering the lush rolling hills of Kigali with hotspots in their ‘Smart Kigali’ project, the country aims to transform itself into an ICT hub for East Africa and get rid of the usual connotations associated with its recent history. The country partnered with South Korean KT Corp to roll out the 4g network and access is granted freely in line with a new business model they are testing in the hopes that the Rwandan economy will grow fast and strong enough to justify the resources spent on providing free wireless broadband access.

Despite naysayers warning that Rwanda does not have a sufficiently large labor pool to justify such an investment, the government is pushing ahead presumably with the logic that internet access is vital in enabling the Rwandan population to reach the technological proficiency required for them to take advantage of the freemium broadband access its now rolling out. We applaud the efforts the Rwandan government to enable its people, we hope this measure along with other initiatives such as ‘One Laptop per Child’ will contribute towards the further develop of the nation.

The question we must ask is, why hasn’t Namibia done this? With an infrastructure considerably more advanced than Rwanda, an English speaking workforce and the revenues generated by telecommunications SOE’s and private entities, Namibia is more than capable of providing each and every one of its 2 million citizens with free internet access. We could adopt the business model and test it out, but it does not take a rocket scientist or large data study to deduce that internet access goes hand in hand with development. Ultimately ICT plays the largest, if not THE MOST important, role in Namibia’s Vision 2030 development plan as set out by the government despite what many may think. Providing free wi-fi access for Namibians would be a step towards fulfilling those objectives.