Education, lack of engineers hamper SA IT

Mia was commenting on the findings of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) Global Information Technology Report for 2005/6 .

The report – now in its fifth year – ranks countries according to their propensity to leverage opportunities offered by information and communication technology (ICT) on development and competitiveness.

South Africa did not fare badly, ranking 37th out of 115 countries. Although it dropped from 34th place last year, this is not due to the absolute performance of SA, but because of the inclusion of more countries in the report, said Mia.

However, its poor performance in the quality of maths and science education (coming 105th overall) and the availability of scientists and engineers (where SA ranked 90th), pulled the overall score down.

The WEF measures countries according to a broad ‘networked readiness index’, which comprises three groups of sub-indices – one which measures the market, political, regulatory and infrastructure environments; another measuring business, government and individuals’ readiness for technology (looking at education and internet access at schools, among other things) and a third measuring usage by the same three.

South Africa was the highest ranked country in sub-Saharan Africa, coming in at 39. Tunisia was the only African country to pip SA, and was ranked 38th.

When it comes to having an enabling political and regulatory environment, South Africa ranks highly at 23. “It is important to have a well-run legal framework, effective law-making bodies, the protection of intellectual property and good financial markets as a pre-condition for success. SA has done well on this score,” said Mia.

Besides education, areas where South Africa needs to improve are infrastructure and individual usage.

“Businesses and government are 36th overall when it comes to usage, but individuals lag behind at 61 overall. This is contrary to the patterns seen elsewhere,” said Mia.

“Infrastructure is also a problematic point”, she said, pointing out SA’s relatively low rankings for the number of telephone lines (78th), availability of new telephone lines (79th), internet bandwidth (77th) and residential monthly telephone subscriptions (79th). “It seems that SA needs to do more in terms of this.”

The United States came out tops out of 115 countries for the third time, dethroning Singapore, which came second. The US maintained its eminent position as a leader in the area of innovation and confirming its position as an information and communication technology powerhouse.

A Nordic block dominated the rest of the top five, with Denmark third (fourth in 2004), Iceland fourth (second in 2004) and Finland in fifth position (third in 2004).