In our modern world, our overall wellbeing is strongly influenced by our digital wellbeing. Surfshark’s Digital Quality of Life Index tries to give an insight on the overall digital quality of life based on internet affordability, internet quality, electronic infrastructure, electronic government and electronic security.
The study covers 81% of the global population and it had some interesting insights that were formulated.
First, 7 out of 10 countries with the highest digital quality of life are in Europe with Denmark taking the global lead. In Africa, South Africa enjoy the highest quality of their digital lives.
They also found out that the COVID-19 outbreak had a significant impact on internet stability. 49/85 countries experienced drops in mobile and 44 in broadband speed due to the working from home setting.
The report also says that there is still a high inequality in affordability. People in 75% of the countries researched have to work more than the global average to afford the internet. They also found out that e-security, e-infrastructure and e-government have a more significant correlation with the digital quality of life than GDP per capita.
How does Kenya stack up?
According to the report, Kenya ranks 77th in the world in the Digital Quality of Life Report. Kenya is 4th in the continent behind South Africa, Tunisia and Morocco and surpasses Nigeria and Algeria.
Although Kenya is said to rank ‘below average’ in this report, it ranks 61st in terms of e-government. This could be thanks to a lot of government services being offered online on platforms like the eCitizen portal. When it comes to e-security, Kenya is in the 68th place just below Peru and Brazil.
The country is also not that affordable as you think. It is ranked 74th globally in terms of internet affordability and surpasses Nigeria in that regard. However, it lags behind Morocco, Algeria, South Africa and others.
The report says that Kenya needs to do more on e-infrastructure. it ranks 84th globally and only Pakistan ranks lower.
