A recent story from Zimbabwe’s The Herald, titled “ICTs vital for development” cites an interesting handful of quotes by prominent Zimbabwean government officials. Such statements are always very interesting considering the ruling party (Zanu-PF) is known to intimidate opposition by using the Internet and generally limits press freedom.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai promoted the economic benefits of information communication technologies:

As Government, we have made ICTs the central hub for the Mid Term Plan, the Millennium Development Goals and other programmes to transform the lives of our people. ICT’s are a critical tool to eradicate poverty and enhance growth. Government has realised that we cannot grow all the sectors of the economy at once and has identified ICTs to spearhead the development in other sectors of the economy.”

Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara announced his desire for the country to become a supplier of knowledge and technology:

We should not just be sales persons, let us design software, let us design gadgets, let us be participants in the design of the knowledge and equipment and not just be consumers.”

ICT Minister Nelson Chamisa addressed short-term goals:

We are not where we want to be in terms of speeds and costs but those are things that are always under construction and we are working with the regulators to see how we can address those. We want our society to be knowledge-based by 2015 and for everyone to be on the ICT platform.

Zimbabwe is indeed becoming a tech-savvy nation with an economy supported more and more by ICT. Let’s hope the leaders and official will act according to their aforementioned words.