Seychelles, S/Africa 14 others lead Africa as Nigeria ranks 137th in ICT Dev. Index
It was disappointment Wednesday as International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in its ‘Measuring the Information Society’ report on ICT Development Index (IDI) has placed Nigeria in a distant 137th position while smaller nations like Seychelles and S/Africa lead the continent.
Nigeria ranked 137th out of 175 countries rated
Industry pundits say the worrisome aspect of the new report is that Nigeria, which ranked 137th in 2015, still remained on the same spot in 2016. Though, the IDI in 2015 was 2.48 per cent, which slightly climbed to 2.72 in the outgoing year.
Business Hilights recalls that the IDI is an index published by the United Nations, International Telecommunication Union (ITU), based on internationally agreed information and communication technologies (ICT) indicators. The IDI is based on 11 ICT indicators, grouped in three clusters: access, use and skills.
The report further revealed that South Korea, which ranked number one in 2015, with 8.78 per cent IDI penetration maintained the same position in 2016, even with higher IDI of 8.84 per cent penetration. Other members of the top ten include Iceland (8.83 per cent); Denmark (8.74 per cent); Switzerland (8.68 per cent); United Kingdom (8.57 per cent); Hong Kong (8.46 per cent); Sweden (8.45 per cent); Netherland (8.43 per cent); Norway (8.42 per cent); and, Japan (8.37 per cent).
Unfortunately, global giant, the United States of America fall to 15th with 8.17 per cent penetration.
In Africa, while Seychelles ranking 87th with 5.03 IDI penetration from 85th position and 4.77 per cent in 2015, the country leads other African countries. South Africa is next with 5.03 per cent and 88th position from 4.70 per cent in 2015.Tunisia is next. It had a slight IDI growth of 4.83 per cent in 2016 from 4.49 per cent it had in 2015, which placed it at 95th position.
Some industry analysts who spoke on the development said not much was recorded in Nigeria’s telecoms development within the period under review.
According to Dr. Oliver Aburimen, a systems engineer, “The inability of Nigerian government to resolve issues of Right of Way (RoW) so as to encourage Infracos to deliver on the last mile communications services remains a negative factor that can contribute to the poor result”.
“Also, the back-and-front movement of the telecoms regulator in announcing Infracos for other zones of the country is another factor.
Continuing, Aburimen argued that “the so called 4G LTE rollout by several GSM networks which had not shown serious service delivery is another pointer that Nigeria did not record any meaningful milestone in telecoms sector this year.
