SA’s connectivity: Consumers suffer
Nokia Siemens Networks recently released its 2011 Connectivity Scorecard, ranking countries according to their ‘useful connectivity’ score.
Useful connectivity is seen as the ability of connectivity to contribute to economic growth, especially through improvements in productivity that are widely held to be the key to sustained economic prosperity.
This annual global study, which analyzes ‘useful connectivity’ in 50 countries, ranked Sweden as the top ‘Innovation-driven’ country, followed by the United States and Denmark. When it came to Resource and Efficiency-driven economies, Malaysia was ranked first, followed by Chile and Russia.
South Africa
South Africa is ranked ninth in the ‘innovation-driven economy’ category, down from number two a year ago. This is mainly due to a very poor performance in the consumer market and a below par business market showing.
“South Africa fell back several places, penalised perhaps by the new data indicators that were used this year, especially as these indicators whittled down what was once a very strong business sector performance,” the 2011 Connectivity Scorecard report states.
One of the issues which stood out in the report is South Africa’s poor performance in the consumer market. The country lagged well behind the leaders in both consumer infrastructure and consumer usage & skills – clearly shown in the graph above.
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