SA ups e-readiness score

Johannesburg, 03 May 2007

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has rated SA's e-readiness ahead of African and other emerging economies.

Written in co-operation with the IBM Institute for Business Value, the white paper evaluates 69 countries on their technological, economic, political and social assets, and their cumulative impact on their respective information economies.

E-readiness, says EIU, is the "state of play" of a country's ICT infrastructure and the ability of its consumers, businesses and governments to use ICT to their benefit.

While SA's ranking in the annual ratings remained stagnant at 35, it was able to improve its overall e-readiness score to 6.1 out of 10, from 5.74 last year. At this position, SA leads the African region, with its nearest competitor, Egypt, 23 places behind.

Denmark again led this year's rankings, followed by the US and Sweden tied for second place. Within the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region, Israel came in tops with a ranking of 23, followed by the United Arab Emirates at 33 and SA at 35.

SA also outperformed the ratings of major emerging economies Brazil (43), Russia (57), India (54 tied with the Philippines) and China (56).

On a segmental basis, SA performed best in the government policy and vision category, with a score of 7.05, placing it in joint first place with Israel in the MEA region. Its lowest score was for connectivity and technology infrastructure, at 4.3, placing it in third place for the region.

"This ranking confirms our conviction that, in spite of a limited skills base, we have a policy environment that is groundbreaking and competes well in the world," says communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri.

"This is why our government's focus is now on investing in strategic ICT infrastructure, as well as increasing access, uptake and usage of ICT by all of government."

In other categories, SA received a score of 6.84 for its business environment - placing it third in the MEA region; five for social and cultural - behind the top three in the region; 6.6 for its legal environment - placing it second in the region; and seven out of a possible 10 for its consumer and business adoption.