According to a paper presented at AfricaCom in Cape Town, Kenya has topped the list of African countries, along with South Africa and Egypt, with a robust mobile government implementation.
The report says Kenya is leading the quest to realise the benefits to citizens and small businesses of delivering public services using cellular technologies.
Over the past few years, the benefits of e-government services have become more and clearer to governments in Africa. Electronic services are a great source of economic, social and political development which encourages engagement and improves service access.
“It is striking when looking at e-government strategies in Africa that there is no clear articulation of the role mobile devices can play in the spread of e-government services,” said co-author of the report Nick Jotischky. “Given the importance of mobile in Africa’s economy and culture over the last decade, this appears strange.”
Jotischky believes the continuing growth in wireless access ensures a wide audience reach. According to him, Smartphone penetration is accelerating. The report predicts that by 2016 over a third of the mobile connections in South Africa will be via Smartphones.
In an effort to raise the transparency in Kenya, it became the second country this year to launch an open data portal, providing large datasets, including census and statistics on government spending at national and county level.
Luiz Sanchez
