Namibia’s revised broadband policy brings renewed attention to the distance between making a network available and making it useful. A coverage map is a necessary planning tool, but it is an incomplete measure of digital inclusion.
Our view is that broadband implementation reports should also track what households can afford, whether they have suitable devices and whether they use the connection regularly. Public programmes should publish those measures alongside infrastructure milestones.
A community may be covered yet face prices that make sustained use unrealistic. Another may have access but lack the skills or services that make a connection worthwhile. These obstacles require different responses and should not disappear inside one national percentage.
Clear adoption measures would make it easier to see whether a subsidy, a skills programme or a service redesign is working. Infrastructure spending matters; evidence that people can use the resulting services should matter just as much. This article presents editorial recommendations, rather than additional provisions of Namibia’s policy.
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