Movers and shakers in information technology in Africa

The Global Information Technology Report 2014 is a special project within the framework of the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness and Benchmarking Network and the Industry Partnership Programme for Information and Communication Technologies. It is the result of collaboration between the World Economic Forum and INSEAD.

The report presents the latest findings of the NRI, offering a comprehensive assessment of the present state of networked readiness in the world.

The top countries are countries that have recognized the potential of ICTs to embark in a new economic and social revolution, and thus have substantially invested in developing their digital potential.

In spite of some progress that is made in Africa, especially in the area of mobile telephony, the region overall continues to suffer from a relatively poor ICT infrastructure, which remains costly to access. More importantly, severe weaknesses persist in the region’s business and innovation ecosystems, which result in very low positive economic and social impacts. To address these weaknesses, a more solid ICT infrastructure needs to be developed and the conditions for innovation and entrepreneurship need to improve.

We have created an overview of the movers and shakers in information technology in Africa on the basis of the results presented in the Global Information Technology report 2014. A full interactive visualisation can be found here. 

The diagram on the right shows that overall the situation in Africa has deteriorated. The majority of the African countries have lost against their position in 2012 with Liberia as the most disastrous country. Liberia dropped 24 positions in the world ranking. On the other hand of the spectrum we observe positive developments in the Seychelles (+13), Swaziland (+10) and Sierra Leone (+9). In total the African countries lost 97 positions in the ranking.

Full report can be accessed here: http://reports.weforum.org/global-information-technology-report-2014/

Full details on the analysis of MIS4D can be found here: https://public.tableausoftware.com/views/TheGlobalInformationTechnologyReport/Dashboard1?:embed=y&:display_count=no