A new study from Surfshark provided some interesting insights into Nigeria’s current digital quality of life. According to the provider of VPN services, the West African country ranks 7th in Africa and 88 globally. It is worth mentioning that Nigeria dropped two places on the continental stage.
Surfshark uses five core parameters to determine a country’s digital quality of life. The factors are internet affordability, internet quality, electronic infrastructure, electronic security, and electronic government. The affordability aspect looks at how much it costs to access the internet.
Countries with affordable plans get high ratings while those with less-affordable data plans typically score poorly. Internet quality refers to the speed and stability of a network connection. Electronic infrastructure is used to determine how stable a country’s e-infrastructure is. This parameter involves studying how easy it is to perform daily tasks like studying and banking using the Internet.
As the title suggests, electronic security is concerned with how secure online users are. Electronic government is concerned with the state of a country’s rate of digital governance adoption. Now that the five parameters are understood, the next stop is analyzing Nigeria’s performance.
How Nigeria fared in the digital quality of life study
In Africa, Nigeria occupied seventh place, two places lower than its ranking in 2022. South Africa remains the top country on the continent with the highest digital quality of life.
Regarding internet affordability, the situation is yet to change. Seven months ago, another analysis from Technext revealed that Nigeria is among the countries where citizens overpay for internet services. What’s more, the huge sums that go to settle internet connection bills do little to nothing to ensure that customers enjoy top-level quality.
In 2023, the study found that Nigerians must work 35 hours and 25 minutes a month to purchase fixed broadband internet. When compared to the European country Romania, the difference is clear. Unlike Nigerians, Romanians have to work a mere 18 minutes to afford fixed broadband. For context, Romania has the world’s most affordable broadband fixed internet. Despite this, the country’s broadband penetration rate has yet to cross the 50% mark since the year began.
Meanwhile, Nigerians also have to work considerably longer periods than other countries to afford mobile internet. Compared to Luxembourg, citizens in the West African nation have to work 2 hours+ while those in Luxembourg can afford mobile internet after 16 minutes of labour.
Regarding e-security, Nigeria fell 7 places on the global scale compared to 2022. The country trails South Africa (72nd) and Kenya (65th) in terms of cybersecurity preparedness. As such, the study argues that Nigeria is grossly unprepared for cyber attacks.
When it comes to the quality of the internet, the country manages to stay within the global average. “Compared to South Africa, Nigeria’s mobile internet is 31% slower, while fixed broadband is 64% slower. Since last year, mobile internet speed in Nigeria has improved by 87%, while fixed broadband speed has grown by 33%,” the study noted. On the matter of e-infrastructure and e-government, Nigeria ranks 93rd and 88th respectively.
Read also: Why the world’s cheapest and most expensive broadband are both in Africa
Why Nigeria must improve digital quality life
Gabriele Racaityte-Krasauske, Surfshark’s spokeswoman, writes that “In many nations, ‘digital quality of life’ has merged into the broader concept of overall ‘quality of life’.” This means that as more basic activities like learning and entertainment are done online, countries must pay attention to the ease or difficulty that users experience with the internet.
The internet is a huge part of the world. Used for virtually every possible task, access to it must not be met with complications. Nigeria has plenty of work to do if it hopes to climb more places on both the global and continental index. It must study what countries like South Africa are doing and incorporate some or all of its findings to improve the digital quality of life for all citizens.
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