DEPUTY Minister of Communications Kopeneg Obed Bapela says South Africa has not moved as a nation to adopt the use of technology to deal with its problems.

Speaking at the Southern Africa Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (Satnac) in East London, Eastern Cape, the deputy minister noted that the social network Facebook had approximately 750 million social communicators globally and according to socialmedialogue.com in April, South African users were estimated at 4 million of which 33% were between the ages of 18 and 24 years.

Local social mobile platform Mxit was reported to be the largest social network in SA with an estimated 19 million subscribers.

"Now the challenge is to move each one of these users to technology and applications developed in SA. We also need to bring innovation on how to introduce content that can address challenges of access to information such as e-government services, the e-Health or M-Health platform and to use social communication to e-commerce."

Bapela said it was common knowledge that broadband infrastructure was an access enabler and only a 10% penetration in SA, "is not good for the country. We have begun a process of reviewing broadband policy and developing an ICT plan to enable us to connect villages and townships".