THE LAUNCH: Mabua Botswana Fibre Networks (BOFINET) last week launched the commencement of the ICT infrastructure called the National Data Centre (NDC). The infrastructure which will be built on a 7,000 square metre piece of land started with a feasibility study in 2014/2015 according to BOFINET Chief Executive Officer, Mabua Mabua. “We made an assessment of the required critical infrastructure that is adequate to support the ICT ecosystem and the economy at large, and we then realized that an open access data centre, which is accessible to all retail telco service providers, on equal basis was missing,” said Mabua. Mabua said another study was conducted in 2018/19 and that it reaffirmed the need for an open access data centre.