SA slips three places in global IT report
Tunisia is the highest ranked African country – at position 36 – just one place above South Africa.
The report, released in Geneva on Tuesday, shows South Africa leads sub-Saharan Africa in terms of networked readiness.
Mauritius (ranked 45) and Botswana (ranked 56) follow South Africa.
While Mauritius has improved its performance by two positions, Botswana has dropped six positions from last year.
The US has regained first position in the rankings – the third time in five years it has been rated tops – maintaining its eminent position as a leader in the area of innovation and confirming its position as an information and communication technology powerhouse.
The US is followed by Singapore, Denmark, Iceland and Finland, confirming the ICT dominance of Asia and the Nordic countries, the report said.
With record coverage of 115 economies worldwide and published for the fifth consecutive year, The Global Information Technology Report has grown into the world’s most respected assessment of the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on the development process and the competitiveness of nations.
The NRI measures the propensity for countries to leverage the opportunities offered by ICT for development and increased competitiveness. It also establishes a broad international framework mapping out the enabling factors of such capacity.
The Report is produced by the World Economic Forum in cooperation with INSEAD and is sponsored this year by Cisco Systems.
"Information and communication technologies presently represent one of the most important drivers in boosting efficiency and productivity in today’s fast changing global economy. The United States has been for many years an ICT powerhouse, and its sustained ability to harness these technologies so effectively for boosting the efficiency of its economy and its many markets provides a standard of measurement for other countries wishing to rapidly improve the living standards of their citizens.
"The long pipeline of scientific and technological innovation is a remarkable source of strength for the US economy which, large macroeconomic imbalances notwithstanding, remains a choice destination for foreign capital," said Augusto Lopez-Claros, Director of the Global Competitiveness Network at the WEF and co-editor of the Report.
The NRI examines an economy’s ICT condition on three dimensions: the general macroeconomic, regulatory and infrastructure environment for ICT; the readiness of the three key stakeholders – individuals, businesses and governments – to use and benefit from ICT and their actual usage of the latest information and communication technologies.
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