Sub-Saharan Africa Records the World’s Highest Relative Progress in Digital Entrepreneurship Ecosystems

Sub-Saharan Africa recorded the strongest relative improvement worldwide compared to the 2021 edition of the VIGS ranking of digital entrepreneurship ecosystems, driven in particular by progress in digital infrastructure and digital citizenship.

South Africa, Mauritius and Morocco have the most advanced digital entrepreneurship ecosystems in Africa, according to a ranking published on Tuesday, December 16, 2025, by The Vienna Institute for Global Studies (VIGS). The 2025 edition of The Digital Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Index is based on data from 2022, compared with data from 2017, which served as the reference year for the first edition of the index published in 2021.

The index assesses the performance of digital entrepreneurship ecosystems in 170 countries, using more than 50 indicators. These include the quality of ICT regulations, cybercrime response capacity, the number of secure internet servers per million inhabitants, digital skills among the population, internet freedoms, intellectual property rights, the number of fintech companies, locally developed digital applications, access to venture capital, the number of startup incubators and accelerators, and access to electricity.

These indicators are grouped into four main sub-indices: digital infrastructure, digital citizenship, multi-sided digital platforms, and digital technology entrepreneurship. Each country is scored on a scale from 0 to 100, both for each sub-index and for the overall score.

South Africa, ranked 59th globally, leads the African ranking with an overall score of 43.4 points. Mauritius (60th globally) ranks second in Africa, followed by Morocco (83rd), Tunisia (87th), Egypt (92nd), Cape Verde (93rd), Botswana (101st), Kenya (104th) and Ghana (105th). Algeria (111th globally) completes the African Top 10.

At the global level, the United States remains the country with the most developed digital entrepreneurship ecosystem, with a score of 87.9 points. Home to the world’s leading hub of high-tech industries and innovation—Silicon Valley—the U.S. is closely followed by Denmark, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Singapore.

An analysis of regional performance between 2017 and 2022 shows that Europe recorded the strongest absolute increase, with its average score rising from 50.9 to 62.4 points, an increase of 11.5 points. North America also experienced significant growth, with its average score increasing by 9.4 points to reach 83 points. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region posted the third-highest absolute growth, with an increase of 8.5 points to 36.4 points.

Asia also recorded notable progress, with its average score rising from 32.2 to 40.6 points. Meanwhile, Sub-Saharan Africa, which started with the lowest initial score, recorded the smallest nominal increase, with an average score rising by only 4.1 points, from 9.7 to 13.8 points.

However, this trend suggests that regions with higher initial scores tend to develop their ecosystems faster in absolute terms. This longitudinal evolution does not fully capture relative development. Indeed, Sub-Saharan Africa’s increase of 4.1 points represents a 42.27% growth between 2017 and 2022, compared to Europe’s 11.5-point increase, which corresponds to a 22.58% growth over the same period.

This indicates that despite lower absolute gains, regions that were initially lagging behind are progressing more rapidly in relative terms than more advanced regions.

The strong growth recorded in Sub-Saharan Africa between 2017 and 2022 reflects, in particular, significant improvements in the digital infrastructure and digital citizenship sub-indices.