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March 5, 2021

by Roger Strukhoff

The nation of Georgia calls itself Sakartvelo in its own people's language; the term Georgia may or may not have come from an association with Saint George, a Greco-Roman and early Christian. Its St. George's Cross national flag indicates it does have this association

Georgia Emerges as Number One

By any name, Georgia has emerged in stunning fashion in recent years as a technology-driven society, and shot to the top of my Tau Institute rankings for 2019. This small nation of about 3.7 million people is physically about the size as the US state of Georgia, and located in the Caucasus Mountains just south of Russia. It was formerly part of the Soviet Union, bordering two other USSR nations, Azerbaijan and Armenia. It also shares a border with Turkey to the south.

Pliny the Elder and other ancient writers noted the extraordinary tribal and linguistic variety of this region, and territorial skirmishes in the region continue today. In addition to its linguistic remoteness, Georgia had a nasty conflict (war) with Russia in the years after the USSR broke apart. Yet this plucky nation with a unique writing system that looks like the stuff in the image below has emerged in recent years economically and technologically.

Steady Growth

Georgia has averaged a steady 3.3% growth in GDP in dollar terms per year since 2011, in a region where currency stability against the dollar is a difficult task. Its cost of living remains remarkably low, letting the country provide a pleasant surprise to tourists and business people who visit. The country's economic inequality is not great, but still lower than the US, and its reputation for corruption is on a par with the former satellite nations of the USSR.

Georgia's technological infrastructure for a nation of its limited current wealth is quite good, with high-speed access and server numbers that exceed the norm, and with some of the most highly developed mobility in the world. Its overall combination of great cost of living, improving socioeconomic factors, and surprisingly strong IT infrastructure combine to give it the #1 ranking in the world among the 144 countries we now survey.

Its technology factors apart from its socioeconomic factors show it to be quite dynamic, but not overly so, in contrast to a few countries that seem to be developing so quickly they risk the instability found in Ukraine, Bosnia, and a few other places.

The country's small population, about the same as that of Connecticut, means it can be blown about when strong geopolitical winds blow throughout the world. The amount of foreign direct investment (FDI) to Georgia reflects this, varying widely in recent years, but remaining strong at close to $500 per person per year (compare this to $800 for the US and $30 to $50 for much of the developing world).

Beach Report, etc.

Anthony Bourdain discovered Georgia in one of his final shows – its very traditional culture and strong drink and food. Georgia is still relatively undiscovered and unvarnished; its falls into my third economic tier, the Emerging Nations. As far as my beach report, Georgia is far from the tropics and far from an ocean, but does have a few resorts on the Black Sea.

Georgia is a place that adventurous people and investors should absolutely visit, to judge for themselves whether it can build upon its current progress without being overwhelmed, and create a role for itself as a pivot point between Europe and Asia. 

March 5, 2021

by Roger Strukhoff

I keep our Tau Index indices updated internally in as close to real time as possible, then publish the officially updated rankings every two years. Our most recent list came out in 2019, so we are due for a new one later this year. 

The 2019 rankings are still credible, so here's a review of them:

The nations of Georgia, Ukraine, and Estonia have taken the top spots overall; and Ukraine, Moldova, and Vietnam are rated the most dynamic technologically.

I am now able to rank 143 countries. The United States finished 50th overall, and 113th in technological dynamism.

How I Do It

Before you start howling or laughing out loud at the latter ranking, I will point out that these are relative rankings. They measure how well each nation is doing given its current resources. I integrate many publicly available measures of technology development (eg Internet access and speed, number of data servers, mobile subscriptions) with socioeconomic factors (eg income disparity, corruption, infrastructure development).

I don't assign specific weights to each factor, but instead use a series of exponents and logarithms plotted with differential calculus to create overall rankings. I work in this way because socioeconomic development and progress is not linear. It follows boggling sets of sets and plots and curves, and fortunately, we have computers these days to do the heavy mathematical lifting.

Searching for Perfectland

As a reality check, I created a magical place called Perfectland, assigning it optimal inputs (everything from very high Internet connection speed to an absence of corruption and no poverty). If Perfectland does not win the overall ranking, then I am doing something wrong. On the other hand, when it comes to pure technological dynamics, Perfectland must finish somewhere in the middle of the pack because it is already very highly developed. My “tech-first” index seeks those nations that are improving with respect to their current conditions most dramatically.

Thus, the US finishes quite low in the measure of dynamism. Its mediocre result in the overall rankings is a reflection of its lackluster Internet speeds (by developed-world standards), increasing poverty and corruption, and a general non-commitment to no longer trying to be the best that it can be.

We don't expect Vietnam, for example, to be as well developed as the United States, given their vast wealth disparity. But, how well are these two countries doing relatively?

The Past as Prologue

To provide some perspective on the 2019 rankings, here are the top overall performers in my previous rankings, which I update every two years:

• 2011 – Bangladesh | Ukraine | Morocco
• 2013 – South Korea | Estonia | New Zealand
• 2015 – Denmark | Estonia | Netherlands
• 2017 – Kenya | Finland | Denmark

The top technologically dynamic nations in previous years include:

• 2011 – na
• 2013 – Vietnam | Kenya | Uganda
• 2015 – Vietnam | Kenya | Uganda
• 2017 – Kenya | Ukraine | Pakistan

The Red Zone is For...

This year for the first time I've also placed the nations into color-coded zones, following the green-yellow-red pattern, with a few countries in dire need of development falling into an “off-the-charts” purple zone. The green zone also correlates well with new research I've undertaken about the relative ability of nations to address their CO2 emissions and work toward a zero-net balance.

Green-zone countries include (but are not limited to) the top-ranked nations listed previously, along with Rwanda (a great story here), Germany, the UK, and much of Eastern Europe.

Yellow-zone countries, which could either progress or slide depending on what their governments and people do, include the US, South Africa, India, Canada, some of Western Europe, and much of Latin America.

China is on the list of red-zone countries, places that still face significant challenges to get fully up to speed among the world's leaders. Other nations in this group include much of Africa, Central Asia, and special cases such as Russia, Italy, Greece, and Puerto Rico.

The dire cases include South Sudan, much of Africa, some oil-producing countries, and other so-called LDCs (least-developed countries).

There's Hope Everywhere IMO

There are bright spots everywhere and specific opportunities everywhere as well. My rankings have never been meant to be a competition, but instead serve to start conversations and let governments, NGOs, investors, and the people of these nations themselves assign some benchmark numbers to their challenges so that they can improve their countries and their lives.

Violence, corruption, dictatorships, and the continuing welter of problems we human beings create for ourselves serve as massive impediments to progress, worldwide. But I would like to think there is no place without hope.

January 19, 2021

by Roger Strukhoff

The five modern-day Central Asian countries, known collectively as “the 'Stans” (after a Persian word roughly meaning “land of”) are all Islamic, some of them originally Persian cultures dating back thousands of years, some of them more recent Turkic cultures dating from about 500 years ago.

These five modern-day nations were part of the Soviet Empire and then Soviet Union between from the mid-19th century until 1991. Before that, the region can be thought of as populated by nomadic tribes, occasionally coming under the influence of Persian and Chinese dynasties, as well as the notorious 13th-century Mongol conquests led by Genghis Khan.

Most important to their history, they formed the center of the Silk Road and its predecessors for 2500 to 3000 years dating to the late 2nd Millenium BC, connecting China and Japan in the Far East to Europe in the West. The silk trade was the foundation of much of the world's original globalization in an age of travel by camel and communications by pictographs.

Modern Times

Today, Central Asia seems to me to be the Last Frontier, the final and ultimate challenge in fostering the use of technology to develop socioeconomically. I currently only include Kazakhstan among the 144 nations I cover in the Tau Institute's research. This is the best-known of the five today due to its oil wealth and considerable size. But it turns out that Uzbekistan is the most populous of these nations. All deserve inclusion in my research, and I'm working to gather the requisite data to accomplish this task.

I've never traveled to this region, so base my analysis on data, a lot of reading, and impressions of living there from colleagues who have lived there.

Authoritarianism rules the day throughout this region at the moment (with an exception noted below). The Perception of Corruption Index (PCI), which forms a key factor in my core Tau Index and other of my indices, views none of these countries favorably. On the other hand, a robust PCI is not the only thing that matters to international investors, though, or even the day-to-day life of most of a nation's people.

Another reality is that these five nations are quite different in size, culture (to a degree), and for lack of a better word, “vibe.” What may appeal to a touristic visitor may be of no interest to investors, and vice versa.

A Diversion

When I was reviewing all of the data on the 144 nations I currently cover, I imagined a new trade zone or loose union built around the Caspian Sea. This body of water was part of the world's single ocean several million years ago, and is today considered the world's largest lake, in area and volume, dwarfing by several times its closest competitors in Russia's Lake Baikal (the world's largest source of fresh water) and Lake Superior in the United States.

Look at the map, and one sees two of the Central Asian Five (Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan) bordering the Caspian Sea, along with Russia, Azerbeijan, and Iran. Turkey lies close by.

But a slightly deeper look into the region shows the foolishness of the idea. Central Asia and its neighborhood is the historical collision point of the ancient Persian Empires and the more-recent Turkish/Ottoman empire. The region's languages are split among Persian and Turkic tongues, and more recently, the region's now-dominant Sunni branch of Islam experiences flashpoints with a small Shiite population.

Furthermore, Persian Iran is occasionally suspected among the region's governments to instigate Shiite unrest; furthermore, the notion of a broad Pan-Turkish region is generally considered to be a dangerous notion. Adding Slavic Russia into the mix, the nation that dominated Central Asia for a few centuries through its empire and then Soviet Union, complicates matters further.

So, back to the safer shores of looking at the “'Stans” within their current setup and composition.

The Thrum of History

There's a short, thrumming piece called “The Old Castle” in the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky's titanic piano suite “Pictures at an Exhibition.” The suite features several short pieces based on paintings by Viktor Hartmann, a Russian of German ancestry who lived in the same mid- to late 19th century as Mussorgsky. The painting is famous mostly for being featured in this music; the castle is of modest scope as castles go, and appears to be located somewhere in Russia.

But the music sounds as if it's set somewhere within Central Asia, during the times of the Russian Empire. We can imagine a caravanserai slowly making its way along an ancient, dusty road, its camels and men alike tiring of the cruelly long journey, the occasional eagle or vulture appearing overhead to check out the menu.

I think of the mosques of Samarkand (see pic below from UNESCO), Uzbekistan as buildings best suited for this music. The buildings date to a mere 500 years ago, less than 10% of the region's history, yet can be imagined with Mussorgsky's plaintive melody and discordant harmonies in a pastiche of sights, sounds, and smells that define this most ancient and lonely region.

So, Is It Appropriate to Talk Tech Here?

As I've asked previously in recent posts about Italy and Austria, should such historical regions really be thought of as technology investment opportunities? More practically speaking, should a region of authoritarian rule (the lone exception being Kyrgyzstan, which is remote and mountainous in an end-of-the-earth sort of way) be taken seriously by dreamy Silicon Valley types and their global siblings as the next big thing?

My initial instinct is to say “no,” but following my core belief that technology can benefit all, we can look at how relatively developed these nations are, and chart a course for them to follow. My rather naive-sounding goal is to achieve a reasonable socioeconomic environment and standard of living for everyone on earth, through the fairminded application of Information Technology. The two biggest impediments to this goal are, as they've been since the dawn of the species, ignorance and totalitarianism.

To the Rankings

So, to the rankings. To date, Kazakhstan is the only Central Asian country in our relative rankings. Kazakhstan ranks 80th overall among the 144 countries we survey; its ranking is hurt a relatively high income driven by the energy sector, as our rankings are relative, measuring how well a country is doing given the socioeconomic resources it has.

On an absolute (rather than relative) basis, Kazakhstan ranks in the 20s to 40s in terms of Internet speed, access, and mobility. So first-time visitors and potential investors may be surprised to find a moderately robust IT infrastructure in the country, especially in its major cities.

That said, Kazakhstan is rated “not free” by Freedom House's annual survey, and its perception of corruption is very high according to Amnesty International, even as it pursues strong relationships with the world through the United Nations, other organizations, and meetings with leaders from powerful China, Russia, and the United States.

Kazakhstan with 18 million people has the largest economy in the region by far, comparable in size to that of Algeria or Qatar. Turkmenistan has a similar energy-driven economy, proportional in size with its 6 million. Uzbekistan has the region's largest population, 33 million people, and a potential to develop its tourism industry around the historical city of Samarkand. Tajikistan's 10 million people and Kyrgyzstan's 6.5 million remain shrouded in underdeveloped economies, with a difficult government situation in the former and an emerging transparency in the latter.

We will work to find the data necessary to include all of Central Asia in our updated rankings this year. For now, this Last Frontier when it comes to technology-driven socioeconomic development may nevertheless be of interest to you.

December 2, 2020

by Roger Strukhoff

Austria is a Central European nation of close to 9 million people and encompasses an area of about 32,000 square miles, slightly smaller than the US state of Indiana.

It is, in effect, a rump state, comprising a fraction of the size, population, and power it exerted for hundreds of years as the center of the great and vast Austro-Hungarian Empire. Its capital Vienna remains one of the western world's great cities, consistently rated as one of the best places in Europe to inhabit or visit.

Tau Institute Rankings

Austria ranks 41st among the 144 nations I survey in my Tau Institute research of relative national IT development and ecosystems. It is not particularly dynamic, in the way Switzerland is not particularly dynamic.; these are wealthy countries that have already achieved a high level of IT development. Austria thus lies comfortably within my “yellow zone” of nations, the second tier of countries that are neither leaders in the rankings nor laggards.

Vienna still moves to the languid beat of “Along the Beautiful, Blue Danube,” the well-known waltz composed by Johann Strauss II during the peak of the city's influence. The coffee houses are still outstanding, the city's architectural jewels were largely rebuilt after the disastrous Vienna Offensive at the end of World War II, and the people still speak their variety of German at their own pace.

Warum Wien?

So why write about Austria and Vienna? Although there is an active tech development sector in the capital city and signs of the entrepreneurial life in other Austrian cities, my purpose here is not to analyze or tout these cities, but to consider the question of whether great, historical cities and countries need to be as focused on tech development as the Silicon Valley mindset that I and so many others have developed over the past four decades.

As with the blind men examining an elephant, each describing it by their particular experience, people describe cities and countries through their own perceptions and leanings. For me, then, Vienna is above all a city of music, in fact, the particular style of music popular in the 18th and 19th centuries that define the Classical and Romantic eras. I play the piano and an orchestral instrument, yet somehow ended up in the technology business early on in my adulthood. Music has never stopped influencing my perceptions, thoughts, and activities.

So Vienna, the city of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, through Mahler and Bruckner, lies at the center of much of my thinking. I've never lived there, something I'll make peace with some day. (I'm currently in the midst of reading a recent, 1000-page book about Beethoven and his music written by the writer and composer Jan Swafford, and am swimming in the details of Ludwig's unassuming Flemish roots and his early days in very liberal yet unpretentious Bonn in Germany's joyful Rhineland, before he moved onto his destiny in Vienna.)

From Yesteryear to Today

The reality of today's Vienna is like that of any other Western, developed city: big, cultural institutions such as the Vienna Philharmonic are popular to a point, and residents appreciate the local architectural points of pride, but most people go about their lives focused on their jobs and their families, without giving tremendous thought to the cultural details of days gone by.

As a visitor, I can enjoy my idealized version of Habsburg Vienna, just as people visit New York to see a Broadway play, San Francisco to see the Golden Gate Bridge, or Paris to see it in its 19th century glory. As a resident, my focus would no doubt be fixed more on the local train service, feeding myself day-to-day, and whether the tap water is as good as often alleged.

But History Is Not Unimportant

I recently read a novel named Compass that was set in Vienna, from a French writer named Mathias Énard. Actually, the book was set in the mind of its narrator, an unwell musicologist lying in bed in his apartment in Vienna throughout the night, recounting his many experiences in the Middle East and the history of the places he visited there. The book was not music-heavy despite the narrator's profession, but focused more on the French and Viennese fascination with all things “oriental,” as they still say.

Vienna sits at the eastern edge of the German-speaking world, and served as the bulwark against conquest from further east by the Ottoman Empire in 1529 and 1683. Earlier, the Habsburg family, with 10th-century origins in what is now Switzerland, had taken over as the city's rulers in 1440.

Later, Vienna survived the Napoleonic Wars even as much of Austria was humiliated. A raucous era with much conflict followed within all of the German-speaking world, culminating in the final disasters of the two World Wars in 1914-1918 and 1939-1945, out of which the modest, modern-day Austria emerged.

English Spoken Here

It is said that 20% of Viennese today speak English better than German, and its modern prosperity makes it a highly attractive place to live for natives and immigrants alike.

Austria attracts only about 20% of the foreign investment of Belgium (which has a similar population), and perhaps 5% of that of the Netherlands, which is the world's largest FDI recipient. About $4 billion went into Austria in 2019 and $10 billion went out. This is another example of its relative lack of dynamism, but also its stability.

Just Because We Can, Should We?

I've written previously about Italy and its suitability as a tech magnet, concluding that even though a few key policies could improve the deep north-south poverty divide there, that in general, Italy's reputation and reality as a living museum is not something its people want to change.

In that article, I also provided the example of San Francisco, which was a unique, elegant, not especially high powered dynamo for most of its existence, before being transformed this century into an unfun high-tech dystopia.

Vienna, and Austria, seem to be less of living museums than Italy. Vienna itself seems to be a larger, less fragile San Francisco with a much deeper and richer history that has proven its ability to survive over the long term. I doubt it will ever be overwhelmed by tech the way San Francisco has been recently, while at the same time it looks as if it can serve as a reasonable European-style incubator of new ideas for those who wish to live there.

After all, Vienna was at the forefront of innovation and excellence in music a couple of centuries ago; perhaps it, and the modern-day country in which it resides, can inspire modern-day creators as well.

May 18, 2020

by Roger Strukhoff

It feels odd to write about the prospects of any country of the world given that air travel has been throttled to almost nothing and supply chains have been rattled to a degree we haven't yet been able to measure.

Yet just hiding out and doing nothing, not even discussing things, not even trying to hold online events and colloquia, seems like a losing strategy as well.

So, in the hopes of achieving some little measure of economic activity and in anticipation of a time when a semblance of the old normal becomes the new normal, I am resuming my writing about individual countries, particularly in the developing world, and how they have fared in my Tau Institute research and rankings over the years.

Eastern Africa Linchpin

Today I'll write about Ethiopia. The country lies in Eastern Africa, within the Horn of Africa that links the Red Sea with the Indian Ocean. This is an ancient land, known (along with today's Eritrea) as Abyssinia at a time when today's neighboring Somalia and Djibouti were known as the lands of the Berbers.

Ethiopia has about 110 million people within its 430,000 square miles. Physically about the size of Texas and California combined, the country places 12th in world population and second only to Nigeria's roughly 200 million people within all of Africa.

Ethiopia sits above the six nations of the Eastern African Community (EAC), six countries comprising almost 1 million square miles and 170 million people that share Swahili as a common language and which have shown an interest in including Ethiopia as part of a more tightly integrated future.

Here Are Some Problems

There are several less than flattering aspects to the country:

• Ethiopia does not place highly in our ongoing Tau Institute rankings. It currently sits in 98th place out of the 144 countries we include in our research.
• We've recently added an Emissions Reduction Challenge (ERC) Index to our research, and Ethiopia does not do well there either, sitting in our “red zone” of countries that face very difficult hurdles in moving toward a green, sustainable economy.
• Its per-person income is less than US$1,000 per year, among the lowest income levels in the world.
• Its perceived corruption is also does not bring happy news, even though it is ranked above Mexico, Vietnam, and more than 40 other countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe in this area.
• Through its troubles, war, and ultimate breakup with Eritrea, the country has now been landlocked for more than a quarter-century.
• It has unstable Sudan as one neighbor, fledgling and even more unstable South Sudan as another neighbor, its unfriendly former province of Eritrea as another, and almost-lawless Somalia as yet another bordering country.

Here Are Some Positives

Given all this negative information, why be interested in Ethiopia, as some investors apparently are? It's attracted about $3 billion in annual Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in recent years, leading the Eastern Africa region. Perhaps the government's aggressive efforts to develop the national airline and improve the major airport in Addis Ababa, has spurred this interest.

Another plus is a relative lack of income disparity, as is found in much of the developing world. Ethiopia has a very small amount of average income, but it's distributed much more equitably than in the United States, for example, running about the same as in Canada.

Ethiopia is also certainly a fascinating historical place, with its mixture of ancient Christianity (and the belief by many Rastafarians that its former Emperor Haile Selassie was God incarnate) and Islamic Hegira culture, and a language base that goes back to the dawn of modern humans. With those those striving EAC nations to its south and the Arabic powers Egypt and Saudi Arabia in proximity to its north, a case can be made for it to become a regional linchpin and economic power.

Capital and Capital

Addis Ababa, replete with the infrastructure and other general challenges faced by all the developing world, is nevertheless not a massively sprawling megalopolis such as Lagos, Bangkok, Manila, or Mumbai. Its metro population of 4 to 5 million is comparable Barcelona or Atlanta. Its high elevation of more than 7,500 feet presents some health challenges but Addis Ababa is not a tropical sauna threatened by rising ocean levels as are the cities I just mentioned.

From my perspective, Ethiopia represents a classic, maybe the classic example of a major high-risk-reward nation. There are many African nations that score better in our overall Index than Ethiopia. In fact, I can make cases for investment in several of them countries, particularly Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania and Kenya. But none have Ethiopia's large population or potentially linchpin location.

Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, for efforts to end the seemingly endless war with Eritrea in 2018. As part of a ruling coalition, he has also taken some dramatic actions to heal political rifts within the country. But this is still a very dangerous place to discuss politics; Ethiopia is rated as “not free” by Freedom House, a Washington, DC-based group that tracks the countries of the world.

Ethiopia needs substantial improvement to its digital infrastructure – internet speed and access, number of servers, and mobility. The good news is more than 90% of its current electricity is produced by renewable resources, so its challenge in improving the grid is primarily a matter of providing much more electricity, rather than replacing a non-sustainable grid.

Our estimate is it would take about 40% of its current GDP – a high percentage but a relatively modest $40 billion – to bring the entire nation up to a level of digital infrastructure that it enable it to compete more effectively and start to become the regional power it strives to be.

April 19, 2020

by Roger Strukhoff

Ghana is one of 10 smallish nations sitting on the coast of West Africa between Mauritania to the north and Nigeria to the east. It is the best known of the 10 and receives the most foreign direct investment (FDI).

English is Ghana's primary European language, in contrast to the French spoken within its immediate coastal neighbors Togo and Côte d'Ivoire. The country has 30 million people, slightly more than Côte d'Ivoire, and many more than the other countries in its immediate region.

Nigeria is of course the largest nation in West Africa, now with almost 200 million people, and exercises an elephantine influence throughout the region and continent. But Ghana's economy is large enough and its location prominent enough to give the nation its own sphere of influence and significance within the world order of nations.

Ranking is Low

I would like it if Ghana ranked higher in our Tau Institute ratings than it does. I've known and worked with people from Ghana for decades, and have an appreciation for the country's culture (especially its music), and for its people to excel in many areas (including soccer, a sport in which Ghana and the United States have developed a nice rivalry.)

Yet Ghana ranks only 90th out of 144 ranked in our most recent research, slightly ahead of neighboring Côte d'Ivoire. To be fair, it is immediately behind Brazil, an economic giant that's a classic underachiever in our rankings. Ghana's mediocre ranking is more a product of lack of attention to the region by the rest of the world than by its own devices.

We can look at FDI, for example. Even at its current level of $3 billion, highest in the immediate region, the level of per-person foreign investment in Ghana is about US$100 annually per person; compare that to about US$770 annually for the United States. As with all of the developing world, the chicken-and-egg problem (aka the Catch-22 problem) is that investors need to be more re-assured about the country's infrastructure and prospects before they will commit while the infrastructure rather desperately needs investment to fulfill its prospects.

The country's capital city of Accra encompasses about 1.5 million people in its metro area. Accra has been designated a gamma+ city by the Globalization and World Cities Network (GaWC), putting it at the same level as cities such as Cleveland, Glasgow, Rotterdam, and Osaka.

Areas to Address

Corruption in Ghana is considered to be much lower than that of most of Africa and of the developing world in general, and is on a par with India. However, its economy, larger than its neighbors but just 2% of that of India, is not large enough for the country to overcome the perception of corruption there by the rest of the world.

Our research puts Ghana in the third of four rankings tiers, our “red zone.” For it to move up into our yellow zone of more attractive nations, it would need to improve its access to the Internet (currently sitting at 38% of the population) significantly, to double its average bandwidth, and build up its financial sector and datacenter infrastructure as a result.

Grid Optimism

Ghana's electrical grid is powered 42% by renewable energy, and it would take a relatively modest investment of 16% of its GDP to develop its grid to a level adequate for significant economic development.

As it is, though, the economy has grown only about 1% per year in real terms over the past decade. As a result, Ghana is in the “red zone” of nations that face very serious challenges in upgrading their digital infrastructure while working towards sustainability. That said, Ghana is very close to being in the more optimistic “yellow zone” group of countries; in Africa, this group includes Ghana's relatively close neighbor Senegal, as well as Uganda and Tanzania in East Africa.

The directly relevant numbers in the graphic below are in white type, and how a logarithmic measurement that measures the relative challenge facing each country. Ghana is just very close to having a measurement under 2.00 and moving into the yellow zone.

Historians will also remember that Ghana was viewed with considerable favor in the iconic movie, “The Endless Summer,” which followed an avid surfer around the world in his search for the perfect wave.

The serious point to be made in this post overall is that Ghana has tremendous potential; it's my hope that it can develop its potential into significant improvement in our rankings, its economy, and the lives of its people.

If it can attract investors to focus on its digital infrastructure – sustainable electricity powering a more robust datacenter ecosystem and better Internet and mobile services – Ghana could quickly turn into a significant sub-Saharan Africa success story.

March 5, 2020

by Roger Strukhoff

New Zealand looks like a Scandinavian or Nordic country. It has a small population of less than 5 million people, an advanced economy, and the ability to serve as a model example to the world of how to build a modern, fair-minded society.

It also has much better weather than Scandinavia or the Nordics.

Consistent Performer

New Zealand currently ranks within the Top 25 in my 2019 Tau Index of relative IT infrastructure development, sitting next to Sweden. In my cumulative rankings, which date to 2011, New Zealand finished in the Top Five along with Denmark, Estonia, Finland, and the Netherlands.

Yet all is not perfect in this paradise, and New Zealanders I know will be the first to tell you this. It continues to hear the echoes of its 19th-century subjugation of the indigenous Maori people, and a horrific white supremacist attack at two Christchurch mosques in 2019 (which killed 51 people) reminds us that New Zealand is part of the modern world just as any other nation is. A few years earlier, a disastrous earthquake in Christchurch had reminded people that New Zealand's beauty is a function of its location in the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Back to the positive, New Zealand trails only Denmark in the Perception of Corruption Index. It consumes almost 80% of its electricity from sustainable resources, and falls easily into the “green zone” of countries facing the smallest challenges in moving toward Carbon Neutral and Carbon Zero.

The country's Tau Index ranking dipped a bit in 2019, due to slowing growth in Internet speed and access, the number of servers falling behind many other well-developed countries, and an alarming increase in income disparity (an area in which it now exceeds India even though its income disparity is still much lower than that the US).

Even though it's a remote country, New Zealand's history of stable government and a strong economy continues to attract a lot of foreign direct investment (FDI). Its FDI level has averaged about US$3 billion annually for the past five years, a level that's about 70% per-person of FDI in the US. About half of that investment comes from Australia. I have not heard of New Zealand as an emerging technology innovation hub, and the country has experienced a brain drain over the past several decades, as many seek opportunity in Australia and elsewhere.

New Zealand's overall infrastructure and socioeconomic strengths are illustrated in a scatter chart that accompanies this story. The chart  plots corruption against the challenge countries face in improving things further. You want to be up and to the left in this chart, and New Zealand is there.

NZ vs. Australia

Speaking of which, comparisons between New Zealand and Australia are an inevitable part of life there. I won't speculate on which is a better place to live. New Zealand scores higher in the Tau Index, finishing in the Top 25 (as noted above) compared to Australia in 57th place.

Australia loses out to its neighbor in the areas of average bandwidth and mobile access. It has twice the number of servers per capita, driven by Sydney's status as a major financial services hub.

Australia is considered to be a little more corrupt than New Zealand, even though it hasn't yet descended to US levels in this area. Australia has slightly less income disparity than New Zealand. Australia's lower ranking is, overall, a function of New Zealand being able to develop more IT infrastructure with less money than Australia.

As far as emissions go, Australia has relied on natural resources – including coal – since its original settlement by British prisoners in the 1800s. New Zealand's economic roots were also extractive, but for things other than coal. Today we see New Zealand as a world leader with more than 80% of its electricity coming from sustainable resources, compared to an abysmal 14.5% for Australia. New Zealand emits half the CO2 and related emissions per capita as Australia. It sits in our “green zone” of countries most able to achieve progress toward Carbon Neutral and Carbon Zero, with Australia firmly in the “red zone” and thus facing a very difficult challenge.

Australia has a higher per-person income, and with about 5X the population, a much larger economy than New Zealand.

Beach Report

My country reports aren't complete without a beach report. New Zealand generally has a temperate climate comparable to the California Central Coast, so you won't find the tropical beaches that are famously found in Australia. That said, its beaches are pristine and provide lovely retreats for people who find them.

As far as that remoteness I mentioned earlier, my Australian friends complain a lot about the enervating 8- and 10-hour flights they need to get anywhere in Asia; the situation is about three hours worse for New Zealanders. Flights to Europe are as close to eternal as humans can endure.

On the other hand, New Zealand's capital Auckland is actually a shorter flight from the West Coast of the US and Canada than anywhere in Australia.

Nice Place, But...

New Zealand is not perfect, and with its small population is not a place that should be overrun with new tourists, investors, or citizens. But, as it is one of the best locations in the world for IT infrastructure and addressing emissions reduction, it can serve as a great example for developed nations.

Despite the country's strengths, I haven't heard of a great commitment to innovation in New Zealand. Indeed, a report presented by its government at the 2014 G20 meeting in Brisbane, Australia focused on the drudgery of adjusting macroeconomic measures, tweaking tax breaks here and there, and the like. The mindset seems about the same today.

The report did note that “the challenge of lifting New Zealand’s productivity performance is interlinked with the challenge of boosting international connections.” I have a copy of the report if anyone wants to see it.

So I would ask New Zealanders who are reading this to let me know how well they think their country is doing as far as developing innovative technology programs and stemming the brain drain of recent decades.

February 21, 2020

by Roger Strukhoff

 Vietnam won a little Twitter poll I just held to see which countries I should be writing about. So here's my view:

If I were to recommend one country in the developing world to tech investors, it would be Vietnam. The country has consistently been near the top of the rankings that I've published over the past eight years.

In my latest rankings, which survey the relative technological and socioeconomic development of 142 countries, Vietnam again finished in 8th place, between Denmark and the Netherlands. It is the undisputed leader among developing countries in Asia, and in recent years has finished even above the powerful, developed-world nation of South Korea.

Why? How?

Despite the many modern high-rises dotting the nation's capital Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), Vietnam is still a poor nation. Even after economic growth averaging 7.5% annually over the past decade, it still places 112th in per-person income among my 144 countries, situated between Nigeria and Nicaragua. It still lands in my fourth economic tier, in the Frontier Nations category. It still lags behind almost all of its Southeast Asian brethren in per-person income, including even the Philippines and Laos. It leads only Cambodia and Myanmar.

Furthermore, Vietnam's continuing Communist control is a deal breaker for many tourists and investors from the United States, going on 45 after the disastrous conclusion to what's known there as “the American War.” Indeed, Vietnam's recent investment inflow of about $1.6 billion last year came primarily from Singapore and China. About 2.5 times more American tourists visit the neighboring Philippines rather than Vietnam.

Yet the digital infrastructure found in Vietnam is relatively quite good. Its server infrastructure dwarfs that of the Philippines and is on a part with Malaysia. Internet access is still not so good, on a par with Thailand ; high-speed and mobile access are relatively strong as well.

On the socioeconomic front, Vietnam's income parity is better than most of its neighbors, better than New Zealand, and approaching Japan. Perceived corruption in Vietnam is what's to be expected in the region, with Vietnam ranked closely with Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand.

How I Make the Soup

I group all of the factors that I put into my rankings into seven different “functions,” as a way for me to see why a certain country may perform better or worse than its economic and regional peers. The functions are not weighted by simple percentages, in the manner many traditional ratings are created.

Instead, my underlying data across is all taken from dozens of publicly available resources, and integrated into the exponential and algorithmic functions. The seven functions are multiplied by each other to produce the final numbers.

This produces several looks at the dynamics and momentum of technological and socioeconomic progress, by country. I keep a lid on all this madness by having created a “Perfectland,” a country where everything runs just fine and the children are all above average. Perfectland must of course finish at the top of my overall rankings, and it helps me burnish and tweak the effects my dozens of parameters and seven functions have on another. Doing all this is more fun than it sounds.

A Decathlon, Not a Single Event

So, taking a look at Vietnam, I need to see which functions propel it so highly in my rankings. After all, as I note above, the country is still a Frontier Market, ie, a high-risk place for investors. It doesn't have outstanding overall infrastructure except with servers, and its socioeconomic traits are nothing to brag about.

Evaluating the winners in my rankings resembles a decathlon competition to me. My process seeks the best overall performers, so the overall leaders may not actually lead in any particular category. I like this process, because in fact my research is not intended to find winners as much as it seeks to find opportunities.

With my data, I can identify countries by region or economic tier that do in fact excel in one particular area or another, as well as those countries that are lagging and could benefit the most from foreign investment and projects. In Southeast Asia, for example, Cambodia continues to lag but shows signs of revival from its horrific experience in the wake of the Vietnam War.

Vietnam performs consistently across all seven functions, losing some points in the area of corruption, gaining some in servers and mobile access, performing well in the cost of living, and generally not lagging anywhere. Its population of 95 million people makes it a large enough market to be considered on its own, even if the nature of its government continues to rule it out as a regional or global business center.

Potential for More Volatility

My beach report for Vietnam will be lacking here, as I'm afraid it would come off as too flip for someone who knows the context of the infamous beach scene in Apocalypse Now and is not proud of my country's precipitation of Southeast Asian genocide. But as Vietnam's very long coastline ranges from tropical to very tropical in climate, visitors can expect a lot of great beaches.

But, I must note the potential for continued volatility in Vietnam. One of the indices I create focuses solely on technology, without any mitigating socioeconomic factors. In this area, Vietnam has been a rippingly dynamic place for the past several years, maybe too much so. Technology can be disruptive and I am concerned about its potential for disruption in Vietnam.

I was influenced as a young person by Frances Fitzgerald's book Fire in the Lake, which described the Western world's fundamental ignorance of a non-Western culture and the resultant potential for nasty surprises. Given Vietnam's relative dynamism, I wouldn't be surprised to be surprised by Vietnam again. So it remains a risky Frontier Market even as it remains, as I noted at the top of this post, the first developing nation I would encourage business people to explore.

February 13, 2020

by Roger Strukhoff

Chile is the leader among Latin American nations in the research I've been conducting for the past several years. It currently ranks 26th among the 144 countries I survey, placing it in the second tier of performers, situated next to Canada and Singapore. {Note that this research is relative, and seeks to determine how well nations are doing with respect to their socioeconomic conditions and the resources they have to bear. It is not a ranking of overall wealth.)

Chile and smaller Uruguay – which also scores relatively well in my rankings – have achieved economic growth that outpaces their South American neighbors. Chile's economy grew at fantastic rates of between 8 and 12 percent per year in the 80s, 90s, and first decade of the 21st century.

Its success forms a virtuous cycle with foreign investment, which is higher in Chile on a per-person basis than in better-known Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, or Argentina.

On the Edge

I put Chile in the second of five economic tiers that I cover – it is an “Edge” country, more developed than the 100+ developing nations of the world, but not yet in the small group of highly developed economies. Despite its impressive gains, Chile's per-person income is still only one-quarter that of the US, on a par with Eastern European countries such as Poland and Hungary.

And all is not well in Chile. All has never been well in Chile. It is on the edge in other ways.

Chile's colonial past featured plenty of violence between Spanish conquistadors and the land's indigenous people, especially a group in the south known as the Mapuche people. Almost 10% of the country's 19 million people today claim Mapuche ethnicity. Chile has also fought with Peru, and even today keeps a maritime dispute with its northern neighbor on simmer.

The government of Salvador Allende was famously overthrown with help from the United States in the 70s, followed by the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The rampant inflation experienced under Allende settled down, but an early 80s economic collapse and subsequent severe unrest eventually led to Pinochet's ouster in 1990.

Good and Bad

Since that time, Chile's economy has grown remarkably. It has distanced itself economically from Peru, and has had less chaos than its large Andean peer Colombia, and the large economies of Venezuela and Argentina on the other side of the mountains. The capital city of Santiago has grown into a modern metropolis with a vibrant business culture, even as it remains among the more remote capital cities of the world.

A catastrophic, magnitude 8.8 earthquake in 2010 reminded everyone of the perils of living along the world's Ring of Fire. Then, suddenly, Chile was again disrupted by widespread social unrest just last year, with its people protesting rising inequality and the cost of living. In the face of overall economic growth, Chile's inequality has indeed risen to a very high level, surpassing even Brazil, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico, and Argentina.

To the government's credit, though, perceived corruption in Chile is a magnitude less than with all of its neighbors except for Uruguay.

Personal Notes About Chile

When I first visited South America in the 80s (with very limited Spanish of my own but a colleague who grew up in Mexico), I learned patience. Spanish-style bureaucracy and pace is maddening for impatient visitors from the north, who at first tend to see only what's different in a bad way about the region without appreciating what's different in a good way.

Chile is not fast-paced Silicon Valley, nor will it ever be. It is also not shallow, superficial, semi-sociopathic Silicon Valley, nor should it ever aspire to be. A famous story from 2011 tells the tale of a venture funder who got fed up after six months, offering the most cliched analysis of the situation possible.

But I'll be honest and note that both my data and my personal experience find Latin America to be less dynamic overall than the other developing regions of the world: Eastern Europe, frenetic Southeast Asia, and numerous intriguing nations in Africa.

Regional Power or Not?

Furthermore, a big question is whether Santiago and Chile can become a true regional power. The country's relatively low population places Chile's economy at 40th-largest in the world, on a par with Denmark.

Chile's fellow Andean Community member Colombia has its own problems and lags badly in my overall rankings, placing 87th out of 144 countries surveyed (compared to Chile's 26th as noted above), but has a slightly larger economy, is geographically positioned in the heart of Latin America and is much closer to the wealth of the US and Canada. It thus has some advantages in any battle to emerge as a regional economic leader.

Beach Report

Note: I like to include a beach report if relevant in my country reports. Chile stretches for an astounding 2,670 miles north to south, all of it facing the Pacific Ocean. But don't look for tropical beaches. The cold Peru Current dominates the ocean along all of western South America, in the same fashion the cold California Current dominates the West Coast of the US.

Water temperatures rarely reach 70 degrees, in a fashion almost identical to Los Angeles and San Diego. Great, beautiful beaches are there, and many people prefer the refreshing Pacific over the bathtub water in the 80s found in many other parts of the world. Caveat natator.

Half Full or Half Empty?

It took me some time to write up this snapshot of Chile. Personally, I love the country, and love Peru as well. There's a lot of style and panache to Chile, and a unique, light staccato patter to its people's manner of speaking Spanish. But its relative isolation and simmering potential for unrest combine to make it more of a risk than any data points will indicate, in my view.

February 5, 2020

by Roger Strukhoff

Kenya is one of the better known countries in sub-Saharan Africa. It has the highest per-person income among the major countries of East Africa, and vies with neighboring Tanzania and the much more populous Ethiopia for largest overall economy.

Some Basic Numbers

“Largest” is a relative term, and these three nations' annual GDPs in the US$200-250 billion range are comparable to say, Greece or Iowa in purchasing-power terms. 

Kenya has a high level of income disparity – notably so when compared to the more evenly distributed economies of Tanzania and Ethiopia. Its perceived corruption level is also quite high, again notably so when compared to Tanzania and Ethiopia.

Kenya is a large country (about the size of Texas), and its IT infrastructure is being developed in many regions. 

With a population of about 52 million, it does not feel the crushing population pressure felt in neighboring Ethiopia (with more than 100 million people), let alone West Africa's Nigeria (with almost 20 million in its capital city of Lagos and almost 200 million in the country overall).

Kenya's IT infrastructure made some astonishing gains in the recent decade, enough so to propel it to the very top of the rankings we publish at the Tau Institute every two years. Its IT dynamism has re-established it as a relatively attractive place for investment, with foreign investment rising by about 2.5 times from 2015 to about $1.7 billion in 2018.

I made a spiffy scatter chart that accompanies this article and shows where Kenya placed among the 143 nations I survey.

Being up and to the left is where you want to be on this chart. Along a fairly consistent curve, you can see Kenya separated itself even from the other top finishers.

But I don't want to overstate this result or Kenya's recent success – Ethiopia received $3.6 billion of FDI in 2018, and much smaller Ghana in West Africa received $3.3 billion. Furthermore, Kenya's FDI works out to about $30 per person versus more than $100 per per person in Ghana and more than $800 per person in the United States.

In any case, I've become peripherally involved in the early stages of a couple of sustainable energy research and development projects in Kenya. I will be happy to announce specific details when these projects get a little more mature. 

So I've directly experienced the enthusiasm that is percolating in Kenya, and not just in its capital, Nairobi.

Taking the Regional View

And now, other nations in the region have started to catch up over the past two years with Kenya's technological development. In particular, Rwanda has had a lot of recent success, guided by the strong (if controversial) hand Paul Kagame. In our most recent rankings, Rwanda has reached the top 10 in the world while Kenya has dropped back to the middle of the pack.

Statistics aside, Kenya has positioned itself as a regional leader. It has pushed Swahili, a Bantu language that is widely spoken throughout East Africa, as the lingua franca for itself and for the region. Linguistic conflicts are rife throughout the world, as are ethnic and religious divisions; Kenya is as multicultural as any nation in its peoples' self-identification and religious conflict has raised its ugly head more than once in recent years.

But the regional push for Swahili complements a political push for the East African Community, or EAC. This movement dates to 1967, was in remission for a long time, but revived in 2000. The afore-mentioned Paul Kagame heads it, its headquarters is in Tanzania, and Kenya is an active participant in the very difficult process of maintaining the EAC's current EU-like activity while trying to wring a new sovereign state out of the region.

Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Kenya, and fledgling South Sudan belong to the EAC; Ethiopia is working hard to integrate with Kenya economically and discussions of its possible membership in the EAC (even though it is not a Swahili-speaking country) can be heard.

The seven countries mentioned here have a combined population of rivaling that of the United States and a combined economy rivaling that of South Africa.

The Big Electricity Gap

Despite the recent technological process in Kenya and the region, Eastern Africa badly needs electricity (as I've written before). The people in this region get by on about 1% of the per-person electricity that we expect in developed nations. That number translates to about a 60-watt bulb per household on average – and the reality is that tens of millions of people in Eastern Africa have no electric power in their homes.

My research encompasses projections on what it would take financially to bring the developing nations of the world up to speed with the developed world. I wouldn't expect any of these nations to reach 100% parity with the developed world, but achieving even 25% would be a huge step and enable tremendous economic development.

So, I have estimated the cost to bring the electrical grid in East Africa up to 25% of the developed-world standard to be about $100 billion. Ethiopia would require 40% of that, Tanzania about 20% of that and Kenya about 18%.

The investment required in Kenya also represents about 18% of its annual GDP – a very large number that is at least 10 times the amount of annual outside investment Kenya has received in recent years.

The Emissions Challenge Facing Kenya

As I've written before, something of this scale clearly cannot be accomplished without very aggressive efforts at Public-Private Partnership sharing of risk and opportunity, along with governmental stability to re-assure investors, builders, and operators.

Energy development today, anywhere in the world, must be sustainable. This complicates an already difficult challenge. But as with everything else, this difficulty can be measured. I recently created something called the Emissions Reduction Challenge (ERC) Index, which integrates my Tau Index numbers with the amount of CO2 produced by each nation and the amount of sustainable energy it already consumes.

I've placed the 143 nations into color-coded zones: green for those few countries facing a relatively modest challenge, on through yellow, red, and finally, a purple zone for those countries facing the more dire challenges.

The world as a whole is in the purple zone, mainly due to China's and India's placement in this severely challenged category. The United States is in the red zone. Kenya is in the red zone, as is Ethiopia. Tanzania is doing a little better and is in the yellow zone. Rwanda is one of the few green countries in the world, a designation that further illustrates its recent progress.

Side Trip

Before I conclude, I'd be remiss in not mentioning one of my favorite topics: the quality of a nation's beaches. Kenya faces the salubrious Indian Ocean and is located around the equator. So yes, it has beautiful beaches.

Harambee Spirit

This brief look at Kenya may come off as harsh. Re-reading it, it looks like I'm taking a glass half-empty view of it. My more subjective view has softer edges. Developing the technological infrastructure and improving socioeconomic conditions in any African nation is a hard pull. As I mention above, I'm spending some of my time on projects in Kenya. So I believe in it.

I also believe in the other nations of this region, Tanzania remains the most fascinating and is, in my opinion, the most promising of all nations in the region. But an aggressive government effort to develop its economy makes Ethiopia a nation of promise as well. 

Those “Big Three” economies will determine the region's future.

Among the smaller countries, Rwanda is attracting some new interest, and received per-person FDI comparable to Kenya in 2018. Uganda has also made significant recent progress. Burundi and South Sudan remain among the world's most impoverished countries, but as EAC members offer some opportunity for the most fearless of investors.

Kenya's national slogan is “Harambee,” meaning “pulling together.” Through a combination of its existing internal momentum and some financial push from outside the country, the slogan can be put into effect for continued positive change in the coming years and decades.

February 3, 2020

by Roger Strukhoff

 Let's go to Togo today.

It's in West Africa, just east of Ghana, and has slightly fewer than 8 million people in an area roughly the size of Latvia or twice the size of Massachusetts. It has beautiful tropical beaches, like the header image to this post.

French is Togo's primary European language, with a native language holding similar prominence (more on that later). As part of Francophone Africa, Togo's capital city Lomé is served by Air France by 6.5-hour non-stop flights. So getting there isn't that hard on the global scale of travel difficulty.

New Eco-Village Project

I bring up Togo because today I added it as the 143rd specific nation I cover in my ongoing Tau Index research and related activities. I was prompted by a story about a new sustainable energy project in Togo, featured in an Africa-focused newsletter.

The initiative will bring new electricity grids to 500 “eco-villages” if brought to full fruition. It is supported by the United National Development Program (UNDP) and part of a larger initiative called the Global Eco-Village Network (GEN). Here's a picture from the Afrik21 newsletter from this area:

Underdeveloped Grids

Togo residents get by on about 3% of the electricity per-person of the developed world. More than 70% of its existing power consumption is supplied by renewable power, but even so, given the nation's very low income and undeveloped status it faces a significant challenge to bring its power to Carbon Zero.

My research places this challenge as among the most difficult in Africa, even though the overall challenge is quite small in size compared to so many nations with much larger populations.

Togo has among the lowest per-person income levels in the world It ranks 99th among the 143 nations covered in the Tau Index, squarely among the pack members of the critical red-zone countries, although not as dire as the 30 “purple zone” nations we've identified so far as facing existential challenges in developing their Digital Infrastructure.

Complicated Neighborhood

Togo's neighbor Ghana ranks slightly higher, in 92nd place in our index, and has a per-person income almost 3X that of Togo. Ghana is an Anglophone country, and it's critical to note the patchwork of English vs. French influence in western Africa. One country, Cameroon, threatens to be undone by the strong presence of both languages within its borders.

Beneath the colonial residue sits an even more complex linguistic situation. It is here that we're reminded once again of what a poor job Westerners have done in exploiting this part of the world then creating often nonsensical countries that defy the continent's traditional ethnic and linguistic borders.

In Togo's case, a majority of people speak a Niger-Congo language called Ewe. The Ewe people, though, extend well into Ghana to the west and slightly into Benin to the east. The situation is further complicated by Ghana's use of English as an official language. 

Time to Focus on CO2

In addition to my core Tau Index research, I've been looking at CO2 emissions by nation and what to do about them. By factoring my Tau Index results into statistics about how much CO2 a nation emits and how much renewable energy it already uses, I've come up with an Emissions Reduction Challenge number, or ERC, for all the nations I study.

Togo has a high ERC, in my “purple zone” of the nations facing the world's more dire challenges. This may seem odd given that Togo consumes such a small amount of electricity and even then produces 73% of the electricity it does use through renewable sources.

But the reality for Togo, with one of the world's lowest per-person income levels, is that First World initiatives like making the world green are not a priority. In addition to its poverty, the country's reputation for a dictatorial and corrupt government severely impedes any progress its people would want to make.

What Can Be Done?

My Institute and I take no political positions with any country, and would offer no opinion about the political situation in Togo or what should be done there.

Nor am I naïve enough to believe that somehow the leaders there (or in any other country, for that matter) would simply look at my research, listen to my interpretation of it, and get to work on following what I would recommend to help their society improve technologically, ecologically, and socioeconomically.

But my work continues. I believe in it, and of course, I believe in the future of the 8 million human beings in beautiful, tropical Togo, as I believe in the future of all of us on the planet.

After all, this article led off with a small success story in Togo. I'm interested in hearing from investors and people with other organizations with an interest in Africa about your opinions on Togo and what could be done there.

October 19, 2019

by Roger Strukhoff

Oh, Canada is a place that can look like it has greener grass to Americans who despair of our country's violence, health care system, and current political scene.

Indeed, among other things, Canada rates better than the US in the bi-annual Tau Index I've been putting together for several years. In the 2019 rankings, to be officially released in November, it continues this tradition.

• Canada ranks 27th in the world compared to the US in 50th place.
• Within the Americas, Canada is second, just behind Chile. The US is fourth.
• Within developed nations, Canada ranks 13th. The US is 24th.

Please note that these rankings are relative – measuring IT dynamics in a way that accounts for income levels, corruption, cost of living, and the general sense of what one sees in a nation's development versus what one expects given its economic resources.

Sustainable Energy & Politics
Canada is also a world leader in developing sustainable energy, producing about 65% of its electricity through sustainable power resources. The country has long benefited heavily in from the vast hydroelectric resources in Quebec. In contrast, the US produces about 15% of its power from sustainable sources (ie, generation based on something other than coal, natural gas, or nuclear).

So the country seems ideally positioned as a global leader in IT development, sustainable energy and economic development, and even as an example for other nations to follow. The current Liberal Party administration led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is an enthusiastic signee of the Paris Agreement, which lies within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Yet Trudeau just escaped a tense re-election, retaining his role as Prime Minister, but he must now form a coalition with at least one other major party to create a workable majority government. The likely candidate is the New Democratic Party (NDP), which sits to the left of Trudeau's party on the political scale. The Conservative Party actually received more votes in the recent election than the Liberals, but earned far fewer seats.

One interesting wrinkle in all this is Trudeau's support of a major pipeline project that the Conservatives love but that the NDP loathes. And this being Canada, the Bloc Québécois was resurgent in the recent election, winning almost 10% of the seats in the new Parliament. It remains to be seen how Trudeau, son of a famous Prime Minister and as French-Canadien as poutine, as will engage with his cousins et cousines.

Montreal's Renaissance
The French resurgence comes at a fortuitous time for the technology industry. Quebec's capital city Montreal in recent years has emerged as a beehive of tech activity. It considers itself an “AI powerhouse”, it has a vibrant blockchain scene, and the notion of moving to Montreal for a job in cloud computing is not risible.

Canada is often described as a salad bowl or mosaic in contrast to the US's former glory as a melting pot. There are days when it seems impossible for such a large, widely dispersed nation to hold itself together. The distinct differences between its Atlantic Provinces, Quebec, Ontario, its conservative Prairie Provinces, hip British Columbia, and a vast Great White North and its indigenous populations can easily be seen as separate nations.

Yet the country endures, and given its natural resources and its inhabitants' ability to more-or-less get along, it should continue to do so. Canada's telco situation is in the grim grip of a few providers (as in the US), and it faces formidable hurdles in deploying sufficient bandwidth throughout its regions.

As it is, Canada seems to be doing well enough in its ongoing commitment to IT – better than the US surely, but trailing more dynamic Scandinavia, the Baltics, and the superstars of the developing world such as Vietnam, Georgia, and Rwanda.

October 15, 2019

by Roger Strukhoff

Today we'll go to Italy. Because, why not?

This magnificent country remains a foundational source for Western history, art, and civilization. And conversations. More on that later.

Bella Italia is visited by 420 million people (seven times its population) annually, including 12 million from the US.

Italy remains the eighth largest economy in the world. But it scores quite poorly in the research I've been conducting for the past several years, with a national IT infrastructure that lags almost all of Europe. I published a chart  at the bottom of this post when I originally published it at my non-profit site. It shows that Italy is the laggard among the 33 European countries I survey, trailing even depressed Greece.

Lagging the Rest of Europe
This particular chart highlights the European countries among the 110 I survey -- relative IT dynamics are on the y-axis (up is good, down is not), and the challenge facing each nation to improve significantly is on the x-axis (left is less challenging, right is more challenging). I've highlighted leaders Finland and Ukraine, along with Greece and Italy for points of comparison.

But hey, hold on a sec, Galileo. Are things really that bad in Italy?

The short answer is "no."

A longer answer goes like this:

I've used my rankings and data for the past several years as a starting point to conversations. Italy, more than most countries, refuses to be abstracted to a single dot and requires a much longer conversation -- preferably on a terrazza anywhere in the country.

One key point in the conversation concerns income disparity. Italy has one of the widest income disparities within Europe, and the widest of all EU members among its regions. Its average GDP per-person is around $30,000 -- this is 20% below France, 25% below Germany, and lower than the poorest US state of Mississippi.

Its poorest, southern regions have GDP levels of about 60% of Italy's national average. In contrast, its wealthier areas (such as Milan in the north) are comparable to France. This disparity makes it difficult to rate Italy with a single number. The country's north/south divide is real.

Do Italians Really Care?
A second, more pertinent issue is, do Italians really care? Do the nation's citizens aspire to be a cool techno-leader like Finland, or to compete in a big-country IT competition with heavyweights Germany and the UK?

Perhaps not. After all, its northern business centers are already competitive with the rest of Europe, and its southern regions have a history, beauty, and traditions stretching back two millennia and beyond that need no modern-day validation through tech development.

Italians are right to be suspicious of change coming to their country. The flood of tourists has been causing problems throughout the country for decades, and few would wish Italy to become, say, San Francisco, a city that used to be America's capital of la dolce vita, but is now an overpriced, unfun tech campus.

It's too easy to get romantic about Italy, and to make glib comments about trivialities such as its police and military having the world's greatest uniforms. The food's good, too.

But the reality, as far as I can tell, is that Italy does need to commit itself to a better infrastructure in its less economically developed regions. It also needs to stare down a demographic trend that shows its population both aging and declining dramatically in the coming decades if it does not encourage immigration.

Its apparently chaotic government can be concerning to outside observers, too. There are eleven (!!) living former Prime Ministers of Italy. A total of 23 men (no women) have served in this post over the past 50 years (compared to nine US presidents), many of them more than once. The Italian parliament is consistently represents a messy pastiche of opinion across the board, some of it extreme.

My hypothesis is Italians prefer things this way. They're quite aware that they've already experimented with a strong republic and an empire that ruled much of the known world, and also had a disastrous fling with fascism in the 20th century.

In fact, its present government, loosely structured and not overly effective, may be an example for younger countries struggling with their own overbearing governments today.

So Italy soldiers on in its current state as a solid member of the EU. Recently, Italy has tried to rattle the EU's economic structure by not exactly adhering to the organization's deficit requirements. But look at its government bonds: they're currently yielding 2.31%, at the EU's high end, but just a couple tenths of a percent above US government bonds. This is not Venezuela or any sort of developing or failing nation.

Outlines of a Plan
I would like to see Italy do these things:

* Focus on achieving a target of 5% of its young people 30 and under to go into IT in some capacity

* Encourage and develop public and private partnerships to generate new sources of electricity, datacenters, and IT jobs in the regions that are below the median in income. Not for a transformation, but for a measurable improvement. Not every country needs to be an IT superstar
​
* Debate seriously about immigration. This is an incendiary topic throughout the world right now, including in the US of course, but it is essential Italy wakes up about its demographic dilemma.

Yes, I would love to live in Italy. And I would love to see its dot on my charts move up and to the left. 

Italy, to me, presents a perfect example of a very mature country that is not going to morph into a modern technostate easily. In its own way, it can serve as a model for all the large countries of the world that wish to honor their past while trying to adopt to change.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Yet, as Joseph Heller noted in Catch-22, Italy endures. 

September 20, 2019

by Roger Strukhoff

The Eastern European region has always done well in our rankings, from the time we started them in 2011. A combination of very good Internet access, high bandwidth, low cost of living, and low levels of income disparity cause the region as a whole to be the most dynamic of all the regions of the world.

Two of the top performers are neighboring Romania and Bulgaria. Both rank in our Top 10 in the world. Bulgaria ranks slightly higher, but the statistical differences between the two are not major.

So let's take a look at Romania and Bulgaria.

Solid Infrastructure
Their technology infrastructure statistics are quite similar. Romania a very slightly faster average Internet speed, and the nations are comparable in terms of high-speed and mobile connections.
Bulgaria has a substantially higher number of data servers per million of population, but the two countries have about the same number of servers overall (around 300,000). This is likely due to the dominance of each nation's capital – Bucharest, Romania and Sofia, Bulgaria – in the local economies, and the two cities' similar populations of 1.5 to 2 million people.

Socioeconomic Factors
Romania and Bulgaria are both members of the EU. However, they are not members of the Schengen visa zone, nor do either use the Euro. There are plans for both to do both at some point. The Bulgarian Lev has been quite stable against the Euro, while the Romanian Leu has declined about 8% versus the Euro in that time.

Bulgaria is perceived as slightly more corrupt than Romania, although neither does well in this area. Each must make substantial progress to reach Northern or Western European standards.

The United Nations Human Development Index is the same for each, with each among the top 50 in the world, although trailing Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Slovenia, the Baltics, and all of Northern and Western Europe.

Both countries, from what I can tell by reports of colleagues of mine who live in them, have sharply defined generational differences – an older group that still remembers the Communist days and is not well adapted to change, and a younger group that aspires to be part of a global technology community and make socioeconomic progress, for themselves and for their countries.

Different Sizes and Histories
The big economic difference is that Romania has almost three times the population of Bulgaria – almost 20 million people versus 7 million. Romania also has about a 30% higher per-person income, which puts its overall economy alongside those of the Czech Republic and Portugal, where Bulgaria is more comparable in overall size to Uruguay and Ghana.

Given that the technology and socioeconomic factors are comparable, and if population and overall economic size are irrelevant to you and your organization, then the big differentiator may be historical.

Romania is a Latin country, with a language that's a cousin to Italian. Known in Roman Empire days as Dacia, it is proud of its Western orientation even as it's embedded amidst a sea of Slavic nations.

Bulgaria is among those in this sea, with a Slavic culture and language written in Cyrillic that will remind newcomers of Russian in its appearance.

Both nations are rated as “high efficiency” in their ability to speak and use English, with Romania just slightly higher.

Lifestyle Factors
As far as lifestyle:

* Both countries have Black Sea resorts, with Bucharest being a couple of hours drive to the sea, compared with five hours or so for Sofia.

* Both countries seem to be those rare places that support both coffee and tea drinking equally.

* Both countries make their own wine and beer. Romania has its own national firewater, rendered as tuica (among other spellings), where Bulgaria is among the raki-drinking places in the world (think Greece and Turkey).

* Ironically, Romania's cuisine might remind one more of the Slavic world than Western Europe, where Bulgarian cuisine can lean toward the Middle East. Extended field trips to sample all of it would be required to develop serious expertise.

* Both have cold winters, on a par with, say, Columbus, OH. Sofia is warm in the summer, and Bucharest can be downright hot.

You Pick 'Em
To repeat what I wrote at the top of this post, both Romania and Bulgaria have done very well in our rankings over the years, and continue to do. Yet, of course, no country can be deemed perfect for a particular organization of individual in the absence of a deep analysis into what is there and what you need. Feel free to contact me if you have a need to go down this road.