Rabat - Morocco has been ranked 78th in the 2015 Global Information Technology Report. It is the country that has improved the most (up 21 places) over the past year.
The report, co-published on Wednesday by the World Economic Forum, INSEAD and Cornell University, has revealed that advanced economies are better than developing ones at leveraging Information and Communication Technologies (TICs).
According to the report, forty-four of the fifty high-income economies covered rank in the top 50. At the bottom of the rankings, 26 of the 30 worst-performing countries are low-income or lower-middle-income countries.
The report's Networked Readiness Index (NRI) is made up of four main categories (sub-indexes), 10 subcategories (pillars), and 53 individual indicators distributed across different pillars: Environment sub-index (Political and regulatory environment and Business and innovation environment), Readiness sub-index (Infrastructure, Affordability and skills), Usage sub-index (Individual usage, Business usage, Government usage) and Impact sub-index (Economic impacts and social impacts).
Morocco's strengths include ICTs accessibility (24), the use of ICT by the government (41), social impact of ICT (64), individual use (70) and political and regulatory environment (71). Its weaknesses include business environment and innovation in ICT (83), infrastructure (87), the use of ICT in business (105), skills (110) and the economic impact of ICT (120).
The UAE topped the list of Arab countries, ranking 23rd in the world for network readiness. Two other GCC countries are ranked in the top 30 for the third consecutive year: Qatar (27) and Bahrain (30). Saudi Arabia (35) and Oman (42) feature in the top 50. According to the report, GCC countries owe their success to a very strong commitment to ICT development by their respective governments. However, countries in North African and the Levant still face problems to fully leverage ICT, including Egypt (94), Lebanon (99) and Algeria (120). Mauritania (138th) remains the region's worst-performing country
Europe is home to some of the best connected and most innovation-driven economies in the world, the report said. Seven of the top ten countries this year are Europeans. Nordic countries continue their impressive performance in leveraging ICTs, including Finland (2nd), Sweden (3rd), Norway (5th), Denmark (15th) and Iceland (19th). These five countries have featured in the top 20 of every edition since 2012.
Sub-Saharan Africa's performance is generally disappointing with 30 of the 31 countries included in the sample are ranked in the bottom half of the NRI ranking. The only exception to this rule is Mauritius which is ranked 45th.
The 2015 edition of the NRI ranks Singapore as the top country in the world when it comes to leveraging ICTs for social and economic impact. It is followed by Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, the United States, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg and Japan.
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