Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 81 | Page 42

COUNTRY FOCUS : SOUTH AFRICA
The IT sector is a significant contributor to South Africa ’ s GDP and the level of sophistication and innovation in this industry is responsible for driving the growth and adoption of IT across entire Africa .

Driving IT innovation acros

View of Pretoria city , capital of South Africa

South Africa has one of the largest information and communications technology markets in Africa . It shows technological leadership in the mobile software field , security software as well as electronic banking services . As an increasingly important contributor to South Africa ’ s GDP , the country ’ s ICT and electronics sector is both sophisticated and developing . It is seen as a regional hub and a supply base for neighbouring countries .

South African companies and locally based subsidiaries of international companies have supplied most of the new fixed and wireless telecoms networks established across the continent in recent years . expenditure reducing to counteract the increasing debt from the economic downturn and the pandemic .
The Government , via its programmes and agencies will embark on an extensive skills development programme aimed at training one million young people by 2030 in robotics , artificial intelligence , coding , cloud computing and networking .
The software sector is still hampered by piracy , and it is estimated by the Business Software Alliance , that around 35 % of installed software in South Africa is illegal . The need for security products is growing with company spending increasing to about 8 % of the total IT budget .
Although the public sector is normally the largest player when it comes to IT spending , the short term sees the
The higher end of South Africa ’ s software market has matured , and companies are price sensitive and
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