South Africa – Climbs to second spot with strong business showing

South Africa is the best performing country within Africa, taking up the second position among its peer group of 25 resource and efficiency driven economies of the Connectivity Scorecard 2010.

The country does particularly well in the area of business usage and skills, reflecting the fact that the larger South African corporations are sophisticated IT users, especially compared to other resource and efficiency-driven economies.  It also scores strongly in business infrastructure, including personal computer (PC) penetration, distribution of secure internet servers and business spending on IT hardware and software. The country performs well in government-related metrics with a range of online services and relatively high spending on IT hardware, software and services.

However, there is room for improvement in the consumer segment and whilst mobile telephony penetration and coverage is good, the country has low broadband and Internet subscription levels and usage, despite high literacy rates.  One weak area of the country’s performance in business infrastructure is in terms of availability of international internet bandwidth. And whilst government services have a relatively extensive web presence, these resources could be much better utilized.

South Africa Connectivity Performance by Scorecard Component