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SA falls in key global ICT index

Johannesburg - South Africa has fallen two places in the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) global ICT Development Index (IDI) from 86 to 88.

The ITU’s annual ‘Measuring the Information Society Report’, which was released on Tuesday, showed the country’s IDI ranking dropped, in spite of improvement in its 2015 IDI value of 4.70 to 5.03 this year. 

This means that while South Africa's score increased, other countries recorded faster growing scores. South Africa ranks behind Seychelles (87) and Mauritius (73).

READ: SA needs more ICT skills to solve economic woes - expert

The annual report presents a global and regional overview of the latest developments regarding information and communication technologies (ICTs), based on internationally comparable data and agreed methodologies.

As a whole, the African region registered the lowest in the IDI performance. Only Mauritius, Seychelles and South Africa exceeded the global average value in IDI 2016, according to the report. 

The report further said that the IDI distribution in the Africa region was more variable, but at much lower levels which are consistent with the region’s economic development.

“The distribution is affected by outliers, in this case three relatively high-performing countries (Mauritius, Seychelles and South Africa); without these, Africa’s average IDI would drop from 2.48 to 2.26 and the IDI range would shrink from 4.47 points to 3.53,” the report read. 

In the report, South Africa was also noted among countries showing the greatest improvement where mobile-cellular penetration and mobile-broadband penetration are concerned. 

Other rankings

Earlier this year, South Africa jumped 10 places in the World Economic Forum (WEF) global information and communication technology rankings from 75th to 65th.

The WEF ranking measures 139 countries and studies factors such as the political and regulatory environment, infrastructure and digital content, usage of ICT as well as economic and social impacts to calculate the overall ranking.

READ: SA jumps in global ICT ranking

“South Africa’s digital transformation is mostly business driven, as the country notably performs best in business usage (32nd), followed by individual usage (77th), followed by government usage (105th),” said the WEF in its note on South Africa.

The WEF, though, stated that in terms of its regulatory and political environment, its innovation and business environment, South Africa is rated significantly worse.

In addition, it also showed strong signs of deterioration, especially regarding technology and venture capital availability, government procurement of the latest technologies, and days as well as procedures to start a business.

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