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Nigeria has been ranked 86th in this year’s Digital Quality of Life Index with respect to digital well-being, a study by cybersecurity company, Surfshark, has shown.
The fourth edition of the annual report covered 117 countries, or 92% of the global population. It covered five fundamental pillars of digital life – internet affordability and quality, e-infrastructure, e-security, and e-government.
Out of the five pillars, Nigeria’s had its worst score on internet affordability (ranking 114th globally), while its best was on e-security (66th). The country’s e-infrastructure services come 86th, while e-government and internet quality rank 95th and 99th, respectively.
In the face of waging inflation, fixed broadband internet has become less affordable worldwide for the second year in a row, prying the global digital divide even further.
This year, Nigeria comes at the lower end of the index, ranking 86th and only making it into the top 90 in the final index, but ranked 7th in Africa.
The country has dropped by four positions since last year’s edition, falling from 82nd to 86th. Out of all index pillars, Nigeria’s weakest spot is internet affordability, which needs to improve by 13970% to match the best-ranking country’s result (Israel).
To afford mobile internet, Nigerians have to work 183 times more (15 min/month) than Israeli citizens, for whom the most affordable 1GB package costs only 5 s of work monthly, according to the study. It said that fixed broadband costs Nigerian citizens around 36 hours 13 minutes of their precious working time each month.
This is as data from the website of the Nigerian Communications Commission showed that broadband penetration in the country rose to 45.65 percent (85,232,291) in August 2022, from 40.01 percent (76,365,158).
On internet quality, which the study measured by speed, stability, and growth, Nigeria ranked 99th in the world and is 26% worse than the global average.
From its position last year, mobile internet speed in Nigeria has improved by 10.8% (2.5 Mbps), and fixed broadband speed has grown by 15.9% (2.6 Mbps), the study said.
However, compared to South Africa, Nigeria’s mobile internet is 2 times slower, while broadband is 3 times slower. But compared to Kenya, Nigeria’s mobile internet is 5% faster, while broadband is about the same speed.
The study noted however that since last year, mobile internet speed in Nigeria has improved by 10.8% (2.5 Mbps), and fixed broadband speed has grown by 15.9% (2.6 Mbps). Conversely, in comparison, Singapore’s residents enjoyed mobile speeds up to 104 Mbps/s and fixed to as much as 261 Mbps/s – that’s the fastest internet in the world this year, the report of the study said.
Global overview
This year, 7 out of the 10 highest-scoring countries are in Europe, which has been the case for the past three years, according to the report. This year, Israel ranked 1st in DQL, displacing Denmark to second place after its two-year lead. Germany ranks 3rd, and France and Sweden round up the top five of the 117 evaluated nations. Congo DR, Yemen, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Cameroon are the bottom five countries.
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