The South African Communications Forum (SAFC) has rubbished the recently published World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Information Technology Report 2010-2011, which notes that SA's ICT uptake remains very weak.
“While the WEF analysis is useful in alerting developing and developed countries alike to the competitiveness of their ICT industries, we find this report factually flawed in a number of areas,” the communications forum says.
Out of 138 countries on the Network Readiness Index, the 2010-2011 WEF Global Information Technology Report places SA at number 61, one step up from 62 in 2009-2010.
The report says SA's weak ICT preparation and uptake is as a result of its poor educational standards, notably in science and maths, as well as the very high access costs to ICT prevailing in the country.
Walter Brown, project manager of the SAFC, says what SA needs most urgently is to develop a system of evaluating its own progress, generating all relevant statistics from its own resources.
He also notes the country needs to find agreement and consensus on its own statistics' accuracy and relevance, as well as using them to set the country's own national development agenda.
“Several of our emerging economy peers, especially those in Asia and Latin America, have favoured the methodologies developed by the United Nations system, particularly the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), through the mandates given to them by all nations through the World Summit on Information Systems (WSIS) process.
“They have called on such UN agencies to assist in developing national and regional consensus on the methodologies and practical processes of measuring their respective ICT developments, and the results are reflected in most international studies.”
He compares the WEF global rankings with a similar analysis by the ITU, an organisation which, he says, is a UN specialised organ delivering on its mandate given by all nations through the WSIS, of which SA is a signatory of the process.
The latest edition of ITU Measuring the Information Society report features the new ITU ICT Development Index (IDI) and the ICT Price Basket as two benchmarking tools to measure the information society.
According to the ITU, the IDI captures the level of advancement of ICT in 159 countries worldwide and compares progress made between 2002 and 2008.
Juxtaposing the WEF and the ITU reports, Brown believes the later holds more water, as it makes use of development indicators in each of the countries it assesses.
The ITU ICT development indicators, he explains, are useful starting points that provide specific indicators of progress in the most critical areas of access and infrastructure development, intensity of ICT usage, ICT skills and capability, as well as ICT impact on development.
“To illustrate our concerns, we provide comparative charts for Argentina, Poland and SA, using the Internet user penetration indicator, which we believe is the most significant indicator of a nation's competitiveness in the global information society.
“The Internet is the root of all modern communications systems, and its use reflects the development of these systems.”
Brown adds that given the comparative growth of Internet users in Argentina, Poland and SA, the SACF, therefore, finds it difficult to find a quick rational explanation of the comparative rankings by the WEF compared to the ITU assessments.
On the other hand, in his budget vote last month, communications minister Roy Padayachie indicated that while mobile communications continue to experience unprecedented growth rates, Internet connectivity to the home remains low.
“Many South Africans still rely on broadband services at their place of work to access the Internet, hence broadband penetration stands at approximately 5% of the population,” he said.
However, Brown says the WEF's international assessments of SA's progress, and that of sub-Saharan Africa, whatever its motives or limitations, are useful in providing a wake-up call in the country's development processes.
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