In the Kingdom of Eswatini, where 58.2% of young people remain unemployed; among the most challenging rates globally, Prime Minister Russell Mmiso Dlamini delivered his End of Year Statement for 2025. This comprehensive address, spanning rural electrification to diplomatic appointments, curiously omitted discussion of what may be the single most transformative economic opportunity awaiting the kingdom’s embrace: a fully-funded digital transformation agenda that could fundamentally reshape Eswatini’s economic trajectory.
The omission transcends mere oversight. It reveals a concerning disconnect between policy priorities and economic imperatives in a nation where 25,000 young people enter the labor market annually, while only 1,000 formal positions materialize. As the Prime Minister spoke of attracting E30 billion in investment commitments and creating thousands of jobs; which he candidly acknowledged “are yet to materialise”, the silence on a concrete, World Bank-backed digital transformation initiative worth E2.8 billion (US$165 million) becomes particularly resonant.
The E2.8 Billion Question: An Opportunity Awaiting Action
The World Bank Group’s July 2025 Eswatini Economic Update, titled Harnessing the Potential of Digital Technologies for Eswatini’s Growth and Job Creation, presents an unambiguous prescription: Eswatini must digitalize, strengthen public finances, and address structural economic constraints to sustain growth. The report’s findings align perfectly with the kingdom’s stated development objectives, yet merit no mention in the government’s year-end review.
This oversight becomes more puzzling when considering the substantial resources already secured. The Digital Eswatini Project, a E1 billion (US$65 million) initiative specifically designed to connect rural health centers, schools, and government offices while restructuring the state telecommunications monopoly, awaits World Bank board approval. Combined with a Development Policy Loan operation worth E1.8 billion ( in 2025) (US$100 million), approved in April 2025 to support fiscal governance, private sector development, and energy security; the kingdom has unprecedented access to international financing explicitly tied to digital transformation.
That these transformative opportunities warranted no acknowledgment in a comprehensive government review reveals a troubling misalignment between available resources and strategic focus.
The EPTC Challenge: A Legacy Constraining Progress
Understanding Eswatini’s digital predicament requires examining its telecommunications history. The kingdom was among the last nations globally to dismantle an almost complete monopoly across all telecommunications sectors. Until 2011, the state-owned Eswatini Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (EPTC) simultaneously operated as service provider and industry regulator, while maintaining a stake in the country’s sole mobile network, South African MTN.
This legacy continues to impede progress. EPTC’s partial exclusivity over national backbone broadband infrastructure creates artificial barriers to performance improvements and cost reduction. The consequences are stark: despite 95% population coverage by 4G networks, only 58% of Emaswati access the internet, primarily because data costs consume 3.47% of gross national income per capita, significantly above regional affordability thresholds.
The World Bank’s assessment is diplomatically forthright: “Realizing [digital transformation] will require bold reforms to unlock the full potential of digital technologies, including the restructuring of Eswatini Posts and Telecommunications Corporation,” observed Satu Kahkonen, World Bank Division Director for Eswatini. The path forward is clear; what remains uncertain is the political will to traverse it.
Strategic Priorities: A Question of Balance
The Prime Minister’s statement celebrated achievements that, while commendable, appear modest against the scale of challenges facing the kingdom. Connecting “48 Tinkhundla Centres, 5 Border Posts and 5 rural Clinics” to the internet represents progress, yet these incremental steps pale against the reality that 41.7% of the population remains offline due to prohibitive costs.
The address devoted considerable attention to international engagements and diplomatic achievements, including Eswatini’s election as president of the Global Council for Political Renewal for 2025-2028 and to the AU Peace and Security Council for the same term. These accomplishments reinforce Eswatini’s standing within regional and global communities. However, for young graduates whose skills remain misaligned with employer requirements; with Eswatini ranking 136th of 139 countries in the International Labor Organization’s Skills Mismatch Index, such achievements offer limited immediate relief.
The government’s ambitious targets; universal electricity access by 2030, energy self-sufficiency by 2028, demonstrate commendable vision. Yet these goals require the economic dynamism that digital transformation could catalyze. With 58.9% of the population living in poverty and 70% of rural citizens below the national poverty line, strategic prioritization becomes not merely important but imperative.
Continental Lessons: The Cost of Digital Delay
The opportunity cost of Eswatini’s digital hesitation becomes clearer when examining African success stories. Rwanda’s post-conflict digital transformation offers a compelling lesson. The Irembo platform delivers 96 government services online to nine million subscribers, while smart classrooms reach 76% of primary schools. Rwanda’s technology sector, once negligible, now targets 10% of GDP contribution within the decade, a testament to strategic vision translated into concrete action.
This transformation required political courage to prioritize digital infrastructure as the foundation of modern economic development; precisely the leadership quality that could transform Eswatini’s economic trajectory.
Youth Potential: A Generation Awaiting Connection
With nearly half of Eswatini’s youth unemployed and 53% not engaged in education, employment, or training (NEET), the urgency for action cannot be overstated. The World Bank-funded Eswatini Youth Employment Opportunities Project, launched in May 2025, aims to empower 30,000 young people through skills training and entrepreneurship support, a worthy initiative that nonetheless requires digital infrastructure to achieve its full potential.
The Prime Minister noted that the Youth Enterprise Revolving Fund approved loans exceeding E4.5 million this year. Yet without affordable digital access enabling participation in modern commerce, such initiatives risk reinforcing existing inequalities rather than democratizing opportunity. How can agricultural value chains modernize when farmers cannot afford digital market information? How can youth entrepreneurship flourish when data costs create insurmountable barriers to entry?
The Sovereign Wealth Fund Paradox: Sequencing Development
Perhaps no single element better illustrates the need for strategic recalibration than the emphasis on establishing a E5 billion Sovereign Wealth Fund; referenced but unenacted in the Prime Minister’s address. While sovereign wealth funds represent prudent long-term planning for nations with surplus resources, their appropriateness for economies where significant populations experience extreme poverty merits careful consideration.
Successful sovereign wealth funds typically emerge after nations have addressed fundamental development challenges. Prioritizing wealth preservation over wealth creation; particularly when transformative tools are available on concessional terms, suggests an opportunity for strategic refinement in development sequencing.
Institutional Alignment: Recognizing Digital Leadership
The Minister of Information, Communications and Technology, Honorable Savannah Maziya, who attended the World Bank’s Economic Update launch and has reportedly elevated her ministry into a genuine driver of economic modernization, deserves recognition for her efforts. Strengthening her ministry’s role in high-level policy discussions could accelerate the kingdom’s digital transformation.
Effective digital governance requires clarifying mandates between the Ministry of ICT and regulatory bodies, while fully operationalizing the Cybersecurity Agency and Data Protection Office through comprehensive change management. These institutional reforms, though absent from the Prime Minister’s review, remain essential for digital progress.
The Cabinet Fault Lines: When Governance Structures Undermine Economic Imperatives
The omission of digital transformation from the Prime Minister’s address illuminates a fundamental governance challenge that transcends personality conflicts to reveal systemic institutional failure. The documented dysfunction between the Office of the Prime Minister and the Ministry of ICT has created measurable economic costs for Emaswati. Consider the empirical evidence: the Royal Science and Technology Park remains without permanent leadership for two years while awaiting executive coordination; EPTC’s reporting structures bypass the Ministry of ICT entirely despite its mandate over telecommunications; and international partnerships requiring unified government response face implementation delays due to contested approval processes. When Eswatini secured its pioneering Google partnership; objectively Eswatini’s most significant technology achievement, it is alleged that the accomplishment triggered not celebration but an investigation into cabinet procedures, consuming institutional energy that could have accelerated implementation. Times of Eswatini’s documentation that the ICT Minister has resorted to self-funding official state duties reveals a breakdown in basic administrative function, while Parliament’s ICT Portfolio Committee’s findings that ministry officials circumvent their minister to report directly to the PM exposes hierarchical confusion that would cripple any organization, public or private. The quantifiable consequences are stark: while governance structures consume themselves with jurisdictional disputes, the kingdom hemorrhages billions annually in youth unemployment costs, loses in billions of Emalangeni in GDP from digital exclusion, and watches $165 million in concessional World Bank funding face underutilization. The Ministry of ICT’s documented achievements: 300,000 UAE-funded training opportunities, operational e-government services, international space technology partnerships, demonstrate what focused leadership could deliver at scale if institutional alignment existed. Yet these successes occur despite, not because of, the governance framework. The Prime Minister’s year-end silence on digital transformation thus represents neither oversight nor malice but something more troubling: a governance architecture so consumed by internal friction that it cannot acknowledge, much less coordinate around, the kingdom’s most viable economic transformation pathway. For the 58.2% of unemployed youth, this institutional paralysis translates into continued exclusion from the global digital economy; a generational tragedy measured not in political tensions but in human potential systematically squandered through governance failure.
The Governance Dividend: Digital Solutions to Systemic Challenges
The Prime Minister’s candid acknowledgment that corruption has been “escalating and spreading in all Arms of Government” presents an opportunity to embrace digital solutions. Digital payment systems create transparent audit trails. Online permitting eliminates opportunities for rent-seeking. E-government platforms expose inefficiencies while enhancing service delivery. The very technologies awaiting implementation could address the governance challenges the administration seeks to resolve.
A Vision for Transformation
The 2025 End of Year Statement reveals a government navigating the tension between traditional development approaches and transformative opportunities. While celebrating diplomatic achievements and incremental infrastructure improvements, it overlooks the digital revolution that could fundamentally reshape Eswatini’s economic landscape.
Minister for Economic Planning and Development Honorable Dr. Tambo Gina’s acknowledgment that the World Bank report “aligns with the Kingdom of Eswatini’s 2024-2028 digital strategy” suggests awareness exists at senior levels. The challenge lies in translating this awareness into coordinated action.
His Majesty King Mswati III’s directive that the Prime Minister remain accessible and open to advice by the Nation, creates space for course correction. With the World Bank offering substantial support, international partners ready to assist, and young Emaswati eager to contribute, the elements for transformation are assembled. What remains is the catalytic moment when leadership recognizes that digital transformation is not a luxury for prosperous nations but the foundation upon which modern prosperity is built.
Conclusion: Seizing the Digital Moment
Eswatini stands at a defining juncture. One path leads toward continued economic stagnation and youth unemployment spiraling beyond manageable levels. The alternative path; illuminated by digital transformation, offers economic inclusion and the possibility of shared prosperity for a generation currently marginalized from opportunity.
The tools are available. The funding stands ready. The need is urgent and undeniable. What remains conspicuously absent from the Prime Minister’s year-end statement is the decisive commitment to seize this transformative moment.
As 2026 unfolds, the question becomes whether Eswatini’s leadership will continue investing in yesterday’s economy while regional neighbors accelerate toward tomorrow’s digital future. For the 58.2% of unemployed youth, the 70% of rural citizens in poverty, and the entrepreneurs constrained by prohibitive data costs, the answer cannot be delayed.
The digital future represents not a post-prosperity luxury but the essential foundation for 21st-century economic development. The Prime Minister’s statement, in its silences as much as its words, reveals the distance yet to travel. The hope for 2026 is that new voices will emerge; voices recognizing that transformation requires more than rhetoric, that development demands more than declarations, and that a nation’s most critical infrastructure investment today lies not in physical roads but in the digital highways connecting its people to opportunity.
The kingdom’s youth await. The world watches. The moment for digital transformation is not tomorrow, it is today.
This opinion piece was previously published on The Wise Swazi
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