Botswana will play host to a set of radio telescope dishes — part of 3000 dishes stretching across Southern and East Africa — in the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Radio Astronomy project, BizTechAfrica reports.

The Botswana government is trying to speed up the country’s transformation from being a natural-resource driven economy to a technology- and knowledge-driven economy, according to the report.

Participation in the SKA project will enable Botswana to contribute to frontier fundamental science research as well as enhance its scientific capacity, said Johnny Swartz, Minister of Infrastructure Science and Technology, during the International Association of Science and Technology for Development Africa (IASTED) conference.

Participation in the SKA project will also will help Botswana to build related infrastructure and advance other areas such as high-performance computing for the analysis of large data sets generated by telescopes, BiztechAfrica reports.

Swartz has met with South African science and technology leaders on several occasions, both in Botswana and South Africa.

The Botswana government has introduced several programs in an effort to
create an enabling environment for innovation, research and science and technology, Swarts said in an earlier report.

“This shows Botswana’s commitment in prioritizing and placing science and technology
as a major driver of our economy,” he said.