A new report released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) has revealed that the conditions for ICT impacts are deteriorating in Nigeria.
The World Economic Forum’s latest Global Information Technology Report 2016, revealed that while the political and regulatory environment are perceived to be improving on several fronts, the business and innovation environment are perceived as deteriorating. The report noted that government usage and engagement is perceived to have dropped significantly over the course of the last year – the hope given for this development was that it could still change under the President Buhari-led government.
But for now, on the overall, conditions for ICT impacts seem to have deteriorated: both economic and social impacts record a decline. This necessitates the need for a policy priority with far-reaching benefits in other areas should be to address the country’s skills gap which the country ranks 134th globally.
The report also revealed that while Nigeria did not move overall in the NRI rankings, staying in 119th position, this fact masks significant heterogeneity in terms of moves in individual dimensions of networked readiness—in particular, a six-spot move up in Readiness (to 117th) and a ten-spot move down in Impacts (to 114th).
Globally though, the picture that emerges from this year’s analysis gives reason for optimism but not for complacency. Although there are still large heterogeneities across countries in terms of networked readiness, the overall trend is positive across all regions of the world. In particular, individual adoption is growing steadily across the globe as efforts continue to close the digital divide.
“Business executives are optimistic about their countries’ growing innovation capacities, yet the digital innovation impact is so far coming through much more strongly in some countries than in others—the gap between seven digital front runners and the followers is wide. The analysis identifies a high level of business adoption and usage of digital technologies as one of the key characteristics of countries in which ICTs are having a robust economic and digital innovation impact. In most countries, businesses are perceived to be moving at only a moderate pace in truly embracing all dimensions of digitization—in their relations upstream with suppliers and downstream with consumers,” WEF stated.
The forum noted that the process will need renewed momentum if firms are hoping to thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Although government use and promotion of ICTs has recently started to fall short of expectations across regions, the reported noted that a number of countries are making large strides in the Index thanks to a strong government ICT vision and engagement in the digital economy.
“Overall, governments can do more to drive the social impact of digital technologies—for example, by using them to make basic government services more accessible. As technologies are rapidly evolving and can be expected to have a profound impact on our economies and societies, new governance structures will also urgently need to be put in place in order to channel technological forces in ways that bring broad-based gains to societies,” the report concluded.
