Seven African countries – including Cameroon, Mali and Zimbabwe – are ranked in the bottom ten of a global index measuring web usage. Sweden tops the index, while there is no African country in the top ten.

The Web Index, designed and produced by the World Wide Web Foundation, is the world’s first multi-dimensional measure of the internet's growth, utility and impact on people and nations. It covers 61 developed and developing countries, and incorporates indicators that assess the political, economic and social impact of the web, as well as the factors of web connectivity and infrastructure.

According to the index - which has also been headed up by World Wide Web founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee - the Middle East nation Yemen is ranked bottom of the web index as it is in position 61. Ranked above it are seven African countries.

These are Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Benin, Ethiopia, Namibia, Mali and Cameroon. Despite impressive developments in its Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector, Kenya is ranked in position 42, Ghana in position 45 while Senegal is closely behind at 46.

Three other African countries, Nigeria, Uganda, Morocco and Tanzania are ranked in positions 48, 49, 50 and 51 respectively. South Africa is ranked 36 on the latest rankings for 2012, while Tunisia is the highest ranked African country at position 31.

The accompanying study for the index says that the web is underutilised in most parts of the world as less one out three people use the internet globally. However, in Africa this statistic is far worse as less than one person out of six uses the web on the continent.

“Growing suppression of free speech, both online and offline is possibly the single biggest challenge to the future of the Web,” said Berners Lee.

He added that “the high price of connectivity" was "stopping billions of people from achieving their rights to knowledge and participation” through the web.

He emphasised that web connectivity costs have to "come down dramatically" as the web is a global conversation although internet accessibility is still considered a luxury in most parts of the world.

Sweden, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Finland top the index.

Technology analyst, Johannes Kwangwari told ITWeb Africa that he agrees that Africa - excluding South Africa and Kenya - largely lags behind its peers in Europe and the Americas in web usage.

However, he added that technological innovation and the increasing adoption of e-commerce was likely to boost usage of the web in Africa.

"At this moment, it’s difficult to dispute that we lag other countries, especially those in Europe and the Americas because their technological usage is so advanced.

“However, we are not far off and the increasing usage of the web for education, e-commerce and mobile web usage through cell phones, will see us ranking competitively in the next two or so years," he said.