Africa continues to trail behind other regions on issues of access, affordability and usage of ICTs, the latest edition of the Network Readiness Report for 2020 has revealed The report, launched by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the Portulans Institution, further notes that once the “ripple effect” of COVID starts to hit international trade and investment flows, such divergences between “network-ready economies” and “laggards” may be amplified The Portulans Institute is a research and educational think tank based in Washington DC which teamed up with the UNECA to launch the results and rankings of its latest edition of the NRI 2020 in a bid to assess how countries are leveraging information technologies for future readiness Titled, ‘Accelerating Digital Transformation in a Post-COVID Global Economy’, the Report will be launched virtually on 30 November
According to the report, Mauritius (61) is the best performing African country, followed by South Africa (76) and Kenya (82); while the Democratic Republic of Congo (133) and Chad (134), have the lowest overall ranking among the 134 economies covered in the Report In a statement, UNECA said the analysis shows that digital innovation and entrepreneurship have increased on the Continent, with more than 400 digital hubs in Africa in 93 cities, including over 130 new hubs opening in the last two years Collectively, they are generating more than $1.1 billion “Contextualizing the analysis on the events of 2020, the Report notes that the race to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic stimulated innovation and creativity across Africa, which showed the continent’s potential towards accelerating industrial development, including those based on home-grown technologies,” the statement said
The authors, however note that use of digital technology in Africa remains low due to critical barriers that limit its potential to transform the Continent The digital technology terrain’s challenges are numerous and are compounded by limited access to the digital services; inadequate and or restrictive policies, legal and regulatory frameworks; lack of skilled labour and expertise; lack of interoperability of platforms; lack of standardisation of data; connectivity and few partnerships These, the Report stresses, need to be addressed, for Africa to fully harness the benefits of the digital era Source: The Anchor
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Source: Theanchor
