Economic impact of the Internet: study of cybercafés in Gaborone, Botswana

This paper discusses the findings of a study that was carried out to determine the economic impact of cybercafés in Gaborone, Botswana. The research design was a survey. The results from the study showed that the cybercafé sector in Gaborone, Botswana, has grown by 1,300 per cent since 2001. The sector is contributing to the gross domestic product of Botswana largely through employment, government taxation and earning the country foreign exchange through e‐commerce and e‐business transactions. However all was not going well for cybercafés as they were faced with problems of competition, high tariffs, low bandwidth, and high equipment costs, among others. The study recommended the need for the coordination of cybercafé sector in order to make its growth less haphazard; reduction of taxes on computers; enactment of cyber law, modernization and improvement of bandwidth.