E-government in Developing Countries: Experiences from Sub-sahara Africa

This article addresses the different institutional and cultural contexts which must be considered when implementing e-government in sub-Saharan-Africa. Although e-government is a global phenomenon, simply transferring ICT solutions and related organizational concepts from developed to developing countries seems inappropriate. Undoubtedly, e-government has the potential to reduce administrative and development problems. However, it is obvious that compared to developed countries, additional effort is necessary when implementing e-government. Especially compared to developed countries, the different initial institutional, cultural and wider administrative context must be considered to avoid unintended effects. It is therefore oversimplifying the issue to merely state that e-government projects fail in developing countries and in specifically in Africa. Although e-government in developing or, more specifically, in African countries lags far behind developed countries, this should be considered more as a state failure or lack of capacity in general. In particular, the different administrative contexts and rationalities must be taken into an account when implementing e-government projects and strategies. Therefore, especially for African countries, a more context-oriented approach seems to be a more promising route to successfully implement e-government. The result of this approach may not seem ambitious from a western perspective but could contribute to the resolution of real-life and development problems in African societies.