Thulagano Merafe Sekogko, the Botswana Minister of Communication, Knowledge and Technology, will be in Namibia this week on a working visit.
Sekogko and his delegation are expected to arrive in Windhoek on Wednesday.
This reciprocal visit follows a benchmarking visit to his country by a Namibian delegation led by ICT minister Peya Mushelenga in August this year. The delegation comprised senior executives from the ministry, New Era, NBC, Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia (Cran) and other media stakeholders.
Leaders of these entities will also be present during the visiting delegations’ various engagements in Namibia.
On Thursday, Sekogko will pay a courtesy visit to his counterpart, Mushelenga, and will also visit the HTTPS High Tech Transfer Plaza Select Innovation Centre, as well as Telecom Namibia head office in Windhoek.
On Friday, the minister will visit the Google Equiano Landing Cable in Vineta, Swakopmund, followed by the WACS Landing Cable.
Also on his agenda is a visit to the harbour in Walvis Bay, where the Botswana Dry port is situated. On Saturday, the minister will enjoy a Sandwich Harbour excursion in Walvis Bay and to Dune 7. He will then depart back home from the Walvis Bay Airport on Sunday.
During the Namibians’ three-day working visit to Botswana, Mushelenga and his delegation visited the Mass Media Complex, which houses state-owned media outlets such as Btv, Daily News newspaper, Radio Botswana and many others, to compare notes and familiarise himself with their operations and set up.
At the time, Sekogko had praises for Namibia’s media standards and regulatory framework.
“When you look at the two countries, you will see that we face the same challenges in terms of ICT infrastructure and lack of modern equipment in our newsrooms, but these are all challenges that we can overcome together and your working visit to Botswana gives us a great opportunity. There is so much we can do together and as I indicated, we would like to compare notes more with Namibia in the media space,” he said.
“Things like the exchange of staff members programmes, exchange of content and sharing strategic and innovative ways of proving more access to information through the media is what we are keen to learn from you. We have also done well in some areas and would love to share with you as well.”
That country’s minister for state president Kabo Morwaeng also said he strongly believed that his country’s media outlets stand to benefit and learn a lot from their Namibian counterparts, as Namibia is currently leading the African media freedom chart as the country with the freest press.
Morwaeng emphasised the importance of collaboration between the two countries’ media houses, but he also touched on the growing need to harmonise communication processes and systems and ICT infrastructure with the hope of cutting roaming costs to the consumers of both countries.
Source : Neweralive
