Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 03 | Page 23

COUNTRY FOCUS SOUTH AFRICA Strong business innovation, weak e-governance South Africa has plus points including healthy business innovation but is being stagnated by lack of ICT government vision and drive to implement. workforce and staff ICT training, followed by mobile phone subscriptions, technology absorption by businesses, capacity for innovation, ICT usage for B2B transactions. It scores low in ICT usage by the government. In the fourth category of parametres, namely economic and social impact of ICT, South Africa’s rank is lower still at 93 out of 139 global countries. It still has relatively high scores in the area of ICT patents, impact of ICT on organisational models and creation of knowledge intensive workforce and jobs. South Africa is ranked 65 out of 139 global countries in terms of its Network Readiness Index. South Africa is ranked 65 out of 139 global countries in terms of its Network Readiness Index, prepared in the Global Information Technology report 2016. Its rank has risen this year from the previous 75 out of 143 global countries in 2015. Out of the four categories of parametres that influence the Network Readiness Index, namely economic and business environment, business and ICT readiness, ICT usage, and ICT economic and social impact, South Africa’s highest strength is in its economic and business environment. In the first category of parametres used to prepare the country specific Network Readiness Index, namely economic and business environment, South Africa is 33 out of 139 global countries. In the economic and business environment, South Africa has high scores for its laws relating to ICT, judicial independence, availability of latest technologies, intensity of local competition, quality of management schools. Despite a mixed performance, South Africa is making progress in the Network Readiness Index rankings, driven by improvements in infrastructure and affordability. South Africa’s digital transformation is mostly business driven. Although the country is perceived to be performing relatively well in terms of regulatory and political environment, its innovation and business environment is showing signs of weakness. This is especially true regarding technology and venture capital availability, government procurement of the latest technologies, and procedures to start a business. On the other hand, investments in infrastructure have significantly increased international Internet bandwidth and put the country amongst the top 20 globally on this particular measure. Furthermore, mobile and broadband tariffs have dropped reducing barriers to adoption in terms of affordability. Going forward, for any significant impact, more buy-in from government will be needed in vision, promotion, and usage of ICT. In the second category of parametres, namely infrastructure, affordability and skills readiness, South Africa ranks 69 out of 139 global countries. In this category, South Africa scores high in the areas of electricity production, mobile network coverage, Internet bandwidth, secure Internet servers. In the third category of parametres, namely ICT usage amongst individuals, business and government, South Africa’s rank slips further to 75 out of 139 global countries. In this category, South Africa scores very high in the area of www.intelligentcio.com Scores of various parametres in the South African Network Readiness Index. INTELLIGENTCIO 23