Nigeria Missing in Global Social Mobility Ranking

Nigeria’s access to technology falls below the required indices and therefore could not be ranked among 82 countries of the Global Social Mobility Index 2020, a report by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

This week, leaders from business, civil society and government, including Nigerian government delegation, will gather in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual WEF meeting. The report was released to coincide with the gathering.

WEF’s new index, which benchmarks 82 global economies, measures social mobility, to provide policy-makers a means to identify areas for improving social mobility and promoting equally shared opportunities in their economies, regardless of their development.

It uses key pillars of social mobility, such as health, education access, technology access, fair wages, work, and resilience and institutions, to determine its assessment of the 82 economies.

WEF believes the new index provides a much-needed assessment of the current state of the paths to social mobility around the world.

Under the technology access banner, the index assesses and ranks six areas: Internet users, fixed-broadband Internet subscriptions, mobile broadband subscriptions, population covered by at least a 3G network, rural population with electricity access and Internet access in schools.

Some African countries ranked are Tunisia 62, Ghana 70, Egypt 71, and South Africa 72. Others are Cameroon 80, Senegal 81 and Coted’Ivoire 82.

In terms of Internet users, the index shows SA ranked 76 out of 82 countries surveyed.

In 2018, Statistics SA’s General Household Survey showed that overall Internet access in the country has increased over the years. However, only a small number of South Africans have access to the Internet at home.

At the time, the household survey revealed that around 61.8% of South African households had at least one person who used the Internet at home, their places of work or study, or at Internet cafés.

Access to the Internet was highest in Gauteng (74%), the Western Cape (70.8%) and Mpumalanga (63.3%); and lowest in Limpopo (43.6%) and the Eastern Cape (51.8%).