Namibia ranks 74th in GCI 2019.

Namibia underperforms compared to most of the world, largely because of its lack of broadband services. Its scores for 4G investment, mobile broadband subscribers, and smartphone penetration have all improved 1 point over last year. But there are still few subscribers to fixed broadband services. However, there has been some growth in demand for cloud migration. User experience has slightly improved, including user perceptions of e-government, but the affordability of mobile broadband services actually fell.

Namibia should continue to focus on building out broadband. Any other approach may do harm to short- and long-term infrastructure development in Namibia. In addition, businesses with narrow profit margins in Namibia are leveraging data, cloud, and analytics. The government could take the initiative to have them embedded in public services, which would grow the ICT user market and stimulate more providers to offer digital services.