A Glimpse into Botswana’s AI Readiness Landscape

Abstract

This study seeks to provide insights into Botswana’s AI readiness landscape. It was achieved by analysing secondary data from the Oxford Insights 2022-Government AI Readiness Index (AIRI). According to the AIRI, Botswana is in position 98, out of 181 countries surveyed. The major drawbacks to successful AI adoption were; a lack of AI strategy, limited capacity to support change, an immature technology sector incapable of supporting innovation, inadequate skills to support AI development, insufficient technological infrastructure to support AI, insufficient data to train AI models, and there are few use cases identified in the public sector. De-spite these hurdles, the country is putting in efforts to transform digitally and there are opportunities for improvement. The country is faring similarly, or even better than, regional peers but is lagging behind global peers in the upper middle-income group. Consequently, it is recommended that the government should start by developing an AI strategy to set the vision for AI adoption.