Eswatini - Digital Economy Diagnostic (English)

This report provides an assessment of the various pillars of Eswatini's digital economy, as part of the World Bank Group (WBG)'s Digital Economy for Africa (DE4A) initiative. Prepared to support the implementation of the Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa, approved by the African Union in February 2020, the WBG DE4A Initiative aims to help drive Africa's digital transformation and sets out a bold vision to ensure that every African individual, business and government is digitally enabled by 2030. The initiative leverages an integrated and foundation-based diagnostic framework to examine the development of the digital economy across Africa. Based on this framework, this assessment provides a comprehensive overview of the five DE4A foundational elements in Eswatini: digital infrastructure, digital platforms, digital financial services, digital skills and digital entrepreneurship. The analysis presented in this report is based on desk research and several fact-finding missions by various WBG digital economy experts, that allowed for broad stakeholder interaction with the GoE, the private sector and other key stakeholders. This report seeks to support various government institutions and stakeholders to take stock of the current state of the digital economy and provide recommendations for further development.