Abstract:
It is clear that technology has brought about significant changes in the livelihoods of
people, creating new forms of employment and advancing the traditional forms of
employment for individuals. Many countries continue to invest in Information and
Communication Technologies (ICTs) with the view to tackling some of the economic
challenges such as unemployment. Botswana like other African countries has made
annual budgetary allocations towards ICT Infrastructure. Despite, the Government’s
efforts to invest and improve access to ICT, the country still faces a high unemployment
rate, particularly for the youth. This study therefore, investigates the impact that access to
ICTs has on the employment of individuals in Botswana. In order to provide a detailed
analysis of the impact of ICTs on employment we apply a probit model for binary
choice responses to being employed or not being employed, using the data from the
2014 Botswana Household Access and Individual use of Information Communication
Technology Survey carried out by the Statistics Botswana. The empirical results provide
evidence that access to ICTs collectively has a positive impact on employment in
Botswana. However, disaggregating the ICTs forms presents slightly different results,
e-skill training and access to the internet in Botswana are not significant in explaining an
individual’s employment status, this may be associated with low uptake of internet and
ICTs skills by individuals in Botswana. The policy message from this study is that there
is a need for aggressive implementation of collective ICT. [In addition, there is need to
improve collective ICTs infrastructure to create more employment].
