Analyzing the network readiness of countries of the world from 2009 to 2016: comparison between Africa and other continents

Information Technology (IT) is now globally recognized as a very strong tool for economic development and is being used by many countries to spur economic growth and to create jobs. In an attempt to objectively measure the progress of Africa in IT development over the last decade, this paper critically analyzes the Global IT Reports of three specific years during the last decade – 2009, 2012 and 2015. This is done by getting the lowest common denominators of indicators present in all the three (3) years and making an analysis on the basis of these common indicators for the countries of the world. When countries are grouped into their continents and a comparison is made of the averages of the NRI indicators for different continents, the results can be used to show how well Africa is doing with respect to other continents and what African countries need to do in order to use ICT to enhance the economic development of their countries.