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SA is Africa's ICT bright spot

Paul Vecchiatto
By Paul Vecchiatto, ITWeb Cape Town correspondent
Cape Town, 13 Jul 2007

SA is the "brightest spot" for ICT competitiveness on a continent that lacks many of the "competitive enablers", says the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

The EIU, the research and advisory arm of the UK-based Economist Group, lists SA as number 37 in its report - the Benchmarking IT industry Competitiveness report, sponsored by the Business Software Alliance.

Pole position went to the US, and the other top five countries ranked, in order, were Japan, South Korea, UK and Australia. Other countries from Western Europe, South East Asia and North America dominated the top 20 positions on the ranking.

At 37, SA was the highest-ranking country from the sub-Saharan portion of the African continent, placing it one below Malaysia and one above Saudi Arabia. Other African countries were Egypt, placed at 55, with Algeria at 59 and the next highest sub-Saharan country was Nigeria at 63.

The IT competitive index is organised into six categories of quantitative and qualitative indicators, numbering a total of 25. This allocates an overall index and category scores to each country. The categories are: overall business environment, IT infrastructure, human capital, legal environment, R&D environment, and support for IT industry development.

SA's overall index score was 33.4 points, less than half of the US at 77.4, but almost double that of Nigeria with 18.7.

Denis McCauley, editor of the report and EIU's director of global technology research, says Africa as a whole lacks many of the "enablers of competitiveness" - factors necessary for the IT industry to thrive.

According to McCauley, these include advanced IT infrastructure, a supportive environment for R&D and innovation by the IT sector, a dearth of skilled employees for the industry and weaknesses in IT educational systems, and patchy legal protection in place for intellectual property and weak enforcement of intellectual property rights.

"SA is the brightest spot on the African continent, with better IT infrastructure than other countries, reasonably effective strategies in areas such as e-government (which helps to 'pull' innovation from IT firms and helps local suppliers), and an improving overall business environment.

"South African IT firms would benefit from a more supportive environment in the above areas, and in that event, the country would very likely move up our index table from its current 37th place," McCauley says.

The EIU's ranking of SA on its index corresponds with the World Economic Forum's placing of the country at number 47 on its Network Readiness Index for last year.

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