Nigeria’s commercial nerve centre, Lagos State, as well as Johannesburg in South Africa has been enlisted as two of 41 smart cities in the Networked Society City Index 2016.
Stockholm is the top-ranking city in the index followed by London, Copenhagen, Singapore and Paris, the Ericsson report showed.
The index measures the performance of 41 cities from around the world from two perspectives: sustainable urban development and ICT maturity.
Although starting at a low level, Johannesburg and Lagos are progressing in all ICT dimensions of the index which includes infrastructure, affordability, and usage.
Stockholm is ranked number one in the sustainable urban development part of the index, closely followed by Copenhagen, Helsinki and Paris. London ranks top in the ICT part of the index, replacing Stockholm, which now ranks second before Singapore on third place.
Lagos is ranked in a category of better performing cities from an environmental standpoint. Cities in this category perform well with regard to CO2 emissions and energy usage per capita but experience high levels of pollution.
Cities that have noticeably moved up the Networked Society City Index 2016 ranking, compared with the 2014 index, include Barcelona, Istanbul and Jakarta. However, Hong Kong, Moscow and Dubai dropped in the ranking.
In general, cities with low ICT maturity tend to mature faster than cities with higher ICT maturity, which indicates the presence of a catch-up effect.
