Kenya, South Africa Top META Region’s ICT Growth Index

The Middle East, Turkey and Africa (META) Information and Communications Technology growth index released its latest list, with Kenya, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirate (UAE) topping as the foremost countries. The International Data Corporation (IDC) opined that the META region holds greater developmental keys, especially for the adoption of new technologies.

Jyoti Lalchandani, IDC Group Vice President and Regional Managing Director META, said in countries where emerging technologies have been put on the national mandate, they lead in innovation and become more mature markets.

Lalchandani maintained that IDC is seeing a major shift in the operating model of digital transformation, where organisations are increasingly looking towards areas like cloud and analytics, to change the landscape in terms of their core investments.

There have been some significant changes for development in Saudi Arabia, Kenya, and South Africa, but growth in Nigeria has been slow, especially towards the adoption of new technologies. The slow growth witnessed in Nigeria’s IT market, is a serious challenge to the West African IT ecosystem expansion, says Lalchandani.

Oil price volatility in the global market, and current political tension in Nigeria are said to be the major challenge to the Nigeria IT ecosystem and it’s affecting the investors’ plans for the regional market.

Lalchandani also stressed that the government’s non-diversification move especially towards ICT is projected to also have a negative impact on the region’s growth.

Meanwhile, IDC Group VP said the UAE is one of the more mature markets when it comes to ICT spending, and this is because the government has incorporated a lot of what the IDC calls ‘accelerating technologies.’

“The interesting dynamic about the UAE is that a lot of these shifts that we see in terms of transformation are being led by the public sector, compared to other countries where it is the private sector that leads digital transformation programmes and projects. Here, the public sector is actually taking the lead.”