ICT POLICY IS JUST ON PAPER

Last Saturday’s Weekend Observer was full of reports about the Swazi Government Information Communication Technology (ICT) policy launch at the Convention Centre, Ezulweni. Speaker after speaker told of how ICT will boost the economy, alleviate poverty and make Swaziland part of some globalised community.

Since the government didn’t bother to invite the University Journalism and Mass Communication Department to its ‘stakeholders’ launch meeting, I realised I’d have to educate myself on the contents of this new policy. So I logged into the Swazi Government website

You’re ahead of me on this aren’t you? Of course, there was nothing about the ICT policy anywhere. Worse than that an area containing important announcements from the government had not been updated since 16 December 2003. I don’t know what the government defines as ‘important’ but how many ‘national emergencies’ have been declared since that date? Only last month we had a proportion of the kingdom destroyed by fire.

I clicked on the link for the new Swaziland Constitution and rather like the constitution itself it doesn’t work.

I wasn’t surprised and I doubt if readers of this blog who have knowledge of Swaziland were surprised either. What we have here is a typical government smokescreen. In Swaziland it is the appearance of activity that counts. They write a policy paper, they call a meeting, they set up an inquiry. Once the paperwork has been completed and filed they forget about it.

Don’t expect any progress on ICT any year soon.