According to a report titled ‘The African Digitalization Maturity Report 2017’ by Siemens and Deloitte of the state of Digital Literacy in Africa. South Africa has the highest digital literacy level across the African continent. Other African countries included in the survey were Kenya, Nigeria, and Ethiopia.
Some of the research areas in the report include the extent and quality of digital technology knowledge among the country’s human capital. South Africa scored highest in the digital maturity assessment.
In part, the research report reads, “South Africa scores above the four-country average in all areas except for digital training (internet access in schools)… South Africa’s score is very close to the international benchmark in the area of access and use. This is largely because of very good mobile network access. The South African population has 100% mobile network coverage and 93% have 3G coverage.”
The research also assessed the countries’ readiness in capitalizing on their digital ratings and economic maturity towards growth and sophistication of their economies. The research also looked into just how sectors such as business, legal, and regulators leverage on technology and the digital infrastructure.
Another research report by the International Data Corporation (IDC), forecasts that South Africa will have the largest spending on ICT across all the countries in the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa (META) as by the year 2017.
Some of the data used in this research were data sourced from other surveys and publications from other internationally recognized institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Economic Forum (WEF), World Economic Outlook, Global Information Technology Report and Facebook penetration rate.
