The country could leverage information, communication and technology (ICT) to eliminate corruption in collaboration with the business sector.
Minister of ICT Savannah Maziya said local investors were critical in curbing corruption, noting that what government planned to deliver in the ICT space could also assist businesses to grow.
She was speaking during the Business Eswatini (BE) and Ministry of ICT Indaba held at the BE War Room in Emafini yesterday.
The meeting was attended by the business sector, the regulator — Eswatini Communications Commission (ESCCOM) — operators and other stakeholders. It was held under the theme: ‘Leveraging ICT to spur private sector economic growth and competitiveness’.
Maziya said one of the issues weighing heavily on her heart was that the top 10 companies in the world with trillion-dollar market capitalisation are ICT companies.
She said these companies had changed or refocused their direction to align with technological innovation.
According to the minister, these ICT giants represent 25 per cent or more of the equity in business within the countries they operate in. In comparison, she noted that the country does not even have 0.5 per cent representation in that space.
She said when engaging government officials and fellow businesspeople, she realised that many did not fully appreciate that the future had already arrived.
The minister added that what had been done globally in ICT transformation could not be reversed, hence the need for the country to be part of progress and growth.
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“As partners, we need to coalesce what we do and how we work together to ensure that we support what you do, but also how do you support what we do? If we can be able to invest in what you need to do to grow this issue of what we do as ICT, not only in the GDP representation, but also in the growth of your businesses, it can certainly be a story that can be told for future generations.
“You would be able to manage and measure, or the other way around. We have to get to a point where we are serious about business — the business of government and the business of people. We have to be serious about saying we want to eliminate corruption.
“We also want to have people working and building a country when we are serious about the direction we want to take,” Maziya said.
She also noted that the world is changing geopolitically, with shifts taking place not only in political spheres but also in commercial partnerships.
