Chinese technology giant Huawei has ranked South Africa 18 in its Global Connectivity Index (GCI), which was launched at the Huawei Cloud Congress, in Shanghai, China, last month.

Huawei assessed 25 countries, which account for 78% of the global gross domestic product (GDP) in terms of their current connectivity and growth momentum, to highlight their efforts made to adopt and benefit from broadband.

The company also surveyed enterprises from developed and emerging countries and focused on ten industries that included logistics, transportation, manufacturing, education and finance.

Germany ranks number one in the GCI, with a score of 76, owing to its strong commitment and ongoing investment in information and communications technology (ICT) development, resulting in a market with competitive vitality.

Huawei Technologies chief strategy and marketing officer William Xu said that, as a technology company, Huawei was obliged to use its best efforts to improve world connectivity such as broadband penetration and connection speed. He added that ICT was vital to national competitiveness.

“Huawei has remained dedicated to enhancing connectivity and communications. Today, our products and solutions allow for close communication for a third of the world’s population. The global expertise we have enables us to challenge how connectivity can be developed in a scientific, comprehensive and objective manner,” he said.

Meanwhile, Chile is ranked fourth in the GCI and number one among developing countries, with Egypt and Kenya being ranked 20 and 21 respectively.

Xu stated that all three countries had the most growth momentum, making them ideal investment targets.

Further, developing markets could accel-erate their growth by investing strategically in ICT capabilities, he enthused.

The GCI found that country connectivity correlated with GDP. Huawei’s study of 16 indexes found that, for each GCI percentage point increase, the GDP per capital increases 1.4% to 1.9%.

The GCI also noted that 65% of surveyed enterprises planned to increase its ICT investment in the next two years.

At least 71% of finance enterprises sur-veyed indicated that their ICT investment would increase by more than 5% over the next two years, making it the highest-ranking industry for development.

Huawei predicts that global ICT spending would increase to about $5-trillion by 2020.

“Today, ICT technologies based on connectivity remains significant as a support system, but this traditional role is giving way, as ICT becomes increasingly integrated with production systems, driving value creation. Connectivity has become a new factor for production, in addition to land, labour, capital and technology,” Xu said.

Further, enterprises would soon drive innovation and popularise an industrial-driven Internet, compared with the current consumer-driven Internet, using connectivity to streamline business processes, reduce costs and improve efficiency.