{"id":548381,"date":"2006-03-29T17:56:48","date_gmt":"2006-03-29T17:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/548381-education-lack-of-engineers-hamper-sa-it.html"},"modified":"2006-03-29T17:56:48","modified_gmt":"2006-03-29T17:56:48","slug":"education-lack-of-engineers-hamper-sa-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/548381-education-lack-of-engineers-hamper-sa-it.html","title":{"rendered":"Education, lack of engineers hamper SA IT"},"content":{"rendered":"

World Economic Forum senior economist Irene Mia told Moneyweb<\/i> that bad maths instruction in schools translates into a shortage of scientists and engineers, which in turn inhibits IT\u2019s contribution to SA\u2019s development and competitiveness.<\/p>\n

Mia was commenting on the findings of the World Economic Forum\u2019s (WEF\u2019s) Global Information Technology Report for 2005\/6<\/i> .<\/p>\n

The report \u2013 now in its fifth year \u2013 ranks countries according to their propensity to leverage opportunities offered by information and communication technology (ICT) on development and competitiveness. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

The WEF measures countries according to a broad \u2018networked readiness index\u2019, which comprises three groups of sub-indices \u2013 one which measures the market, political, regulatory and infrastructure environments; another measuring business, government and individuals\u2019 readiness for technology (looking at education and internet access at schools, among other things) and a third measuring usage by the same three.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

When it comes to having an enabling political and regulatory environment, South Africa ranks highly at 23. \u201cIt 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,\u201d said Mia. <\/p>\n

Besides education, areas where South Africa needs to improve are infrastructure and individual usage. <\/p>\n

\u201cBusinesses 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,\u201d said Mia. <\/p>\n

\u201cInfrastructure is also a problematic point\u201d, she said, pointing out SA\u2019s 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). \u201cIt seems that SA needs to do more in terms of this.\u201d <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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). <\/p>\n

\u201cIndia broadly maintains its position with respect to last year (at 40th place) while China drops nine positions to 50th place, widening the performance gap with respect to India,\u201d states the WEF. <\/font><\/p>\n

Discuss this article<\/font><\/a> <\/font><\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0 <\/font>http:\/\/www.moneyweb.co.za<\/font> <\/a><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa\u2019s poor educational system \u2013 and particularly the lamentable standard of maths and science education \u2013 is dragging the country\u2019s status in information technology ever lower.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-548381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548381"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}