SA fails to make ICT gains

South Africa has, once again, failed to overtake Mauritius and Seychelles in the rankings of the 2011 International Telecommunication Union's (ITU's) “Measuring the Information Society” report.

While SA was ranked 97 globally on the ITU's ICT Development Index in the report, Mauritius and Seychelles sit at 69 and 71, respectively. The telecommunications body ranked South Korea as number one, while Chad took the bottom spot on the list. The 2011 edition of Measuring the Information Society scores the level of advancement of ICT in 152 countries worldwide, comparing progress made between 2008 and 2010.

SA slipped five places after finishing at 92 last year, while Mauritius and Seychelles were ranked 72 and 66, respectively. However, Africa generally scored poorly on the latest report, despite the increasing deployment of broadband infrastructure and growth of mobile telephony. Only six countries from the continent - Mauritius (69), Seychelles (71), Tunisia (84), Morocco (90), Egypt (91) and SA (97) - made it in the top 100.

Spiwe Chireka, IDC's African region programme manager for telecoms, says the key reason SA is trailing behind Mauritius and Seychelles is those countries' small populations, which allow for high levels of penetration for any of the sub-categories that are measured.

“Both countries have a fraction of SA's population, so the comparison in this area should be viewed with caution. If you look at actual numbers, SA would be much larger or higher than Mauritius and Seychelles,” she says.

Walter Brown, project manager for the South African Communications Forum, believes these countries' small populations make it easier and cheaper to build ICT infrastructure. He adds that they also had wise economic and political leaders who used the strengths of the countries' tourism industries to drive economic growth, and reduce income and social inequalities.

“Both these countries have relatively low levels of income inequalities, high levels of education and literacy, as well as good leadership, which recognised early on the value of ICT for total socioeconomic development. SA is stuck with an extremely damaging historical legacy, which itself left a huge vacuum in leadership capacity to drive national growth in this complex technological world,” says Brown.

Chireka concurs, saying both Mauritius and Seychelles have very strong economies, thus investment available for ICT is high, with notable government involvement in driving the sector. As a result, she explains, minimal investments have far-reaching impacts on the population.

“With regard to SA not improving, we have since reached 100% SIM penetration two years ago. This means the incremental impact of mobile connectivity is relatively low. If we look at the countries that have made strides on the rankings, like Zimbabwe, it is because their levels of mobile service penetration have improved significantly.”

Chireka also notes that fixed-line penetration has stalled in SA, and is likely to start declining soon. “Mobile penetration has reached over 100%, so potential for significant changes to this number is limited; and while efforts have been focused on growing the number of mobile devices, the same effort has not been put into driving PC penetration.

“Our Internet penetration has been sitting in the 10% to 12% range for a long time; hence, we are not making significant inroads on this indicator, despite growth in the uptake of data services,” she says. Chireka predicts that SA is likely to reach a point where, while coverage enabling people to access the Internet is available, device capability and affordability becomes an issue. When that is addressed, then content and Internet literacy will become an issue.

In order to improve its ranking, Chireka believes SA should focus more on fixed mobile telephony, arguing that because of mobile uptake, fixed telephone lines per 100 inhabitants are certainly going to remain stagnant. “Therefore, it is important to focus on those things that still have potential to change.”

The other limitation facing the country, she argues, is international bandwidth per subscriber. “With the continuing decrease in connectivity costs, including international on the part of service providers, this is likely to trickle to the retail market, and customers will enjoy lower connectivity costs, encouraging uptake. But not without relevant content to drive uptake. Social media is one avenue, but the level of bandwidth that uses is rather low.”

On the other hand, Brown notes that the first thing SA's leadership must recognise is that neither the state nor the private sector can resolve the challenges alone.

“They must co-operate deeply and fully to begin offering various differentiated ICT services that target the poor, but give them opportunities to develop themselves. The focus must be first on the urban poor, where it is more possible to build affordable ICT networks to create quality self-employment; and to develop entrepreneurs, especially among the youth.”