e-Government in Africa (Dr. Schuppan's Interview with the GTZ Newsletter)

Posted by Christian Schiller

That information and communication technologies can help enhance the delivery of public services and "make public money count" has by now been widely recognized. Clearly, the industrialized and emerging countries are at the forefront of these developments. But, interestingly, there is also a great potential for e-government in the developing world. The most recent GTZ Newsletter (No. 11/April 2008) contains an interesting interview with Dr. Schuppan on the importance of e-government for development policy in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Dr. Schuppan is co-founder of the Institute for e-Government at the University of Postdam (Germany).

The study has been undertaken for the German Parliament and has unfortunately not yet been published. But the interview in the GTZ newsletter already provides an interesting overview of the study. In short, Dr. Schuppan feels that ";e-government undoubtedly has an enormous potential for Africa south of the Sahara," for revenue administration and expenditure management, but also for other government activities. He warns, however, that in order to fully exploit its potential, e-government solutions need to be introduced hand in hand with reforms of the administrative processes and systems that currently exist in Sub-Saharan countries. While overall important progress has been made with regard to the latter, there is still a long way to go, at least for a considerable number of Sub-Saharan African countries. In addition, Dr. Schuppan points out that education and training is critical, not only of the managers of the e-government solutions but also of the users, including, for example, tax payers. Finally, and this should not come as a surprise, Dr. Schuppan suggests that "e-government projects in African countries call for ...much more time to be implemented than is required in industrial countries." To read the interview and receive the newsletter, send an e-mail to public-finance@gtz.de