E-Governance Session Sparks Dialogue at Africa IGF Hosted by UNECA

23 November 2024

On November 22, 2024, African experts and representatives of the E-Governance Knowledge Sharing Program for Africa discussed capacity building in e-governance at the 13th Africa Internet Governance Forum (AfIGF), hosted at the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) headquarters from 20 to 22 November, 2024, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 

During the “Capacity Building in E-Governance through Knowledge Sharing” session, the experts elaborated on the role of knowledge sharing in developing self-reliant e-governance practices in Africa. The discussion started with the country-level cases and experiences, and then the panelists went to the continent scale. 

The session was moderated by Valentin Bianki, Deputy Coordinator of the E-Governance Knowledge Sharing Program for Africa. He underlined the significance of innovative technology implementation for improving public service delivery and enhancing the efficiency of public administration.

As he mentioned, with some challenges in the background (like digital divide, cybercrimes, or brain drain): “ensuring self-reliant and sovereign e-governance is of strategic importance. Through knowledge-sharing initiatives, countries can accelerate their digital agendas, fortify the continent’s collective sovereignty, and drive the future of e-governance in a way that aligns with the needs and aspirations of Africa’s people”.

As Olesya Kalashnik, editorial coordinator of the E-Governance Knowledge Hub, mentioned, “E-Governance allows to facilitate public service delivery to citizens, boost cost efficiency, increase citizen participation, improve data collection, and allow integration and centralization of government activities”. 

She provided a brief overview of e-governance development in Africa. Basic directions in the field of digitalization of public administration were outlined, including digital IDs, digitalization of tax services, AI in e-governance, disaster management, etc., and supported by cases of African countries. 

Dr. Fekade Gatahum, Senior Strategic Advisor to the Digital Transformation Program of the Ministry of Innovation & Technology of Ethiopia, addressed his vision of the public-private partnership issue: 

“To subhold the digital gap existing in Africa, intergovernmental initiatives are important. It could be via contacts or joint bilateral and multilateral projects. The Ministry of Innovation and Technology of Ethiopia works with the private sector to move e-governance forward. We try to promote user-friendliness and access to digital services to all the citizens, as it contributes to digital inclusion”. 

Dr. Jimson Olufuye, who is holding the Africa ICT Alliance, shared his vision of collaboration in e-governance:
“In Nigeria, the digitization process is proceeding, and this is good news. Digital transformation attained our full potential and our biggest efforts, so we now have strategy and policy. But as we still lack operational plans tied to budget and there is no such framework, we need to continue working on it”.

He also commented on the current challenges, emphasizing that managing people to change is the most important:

“People don’t want to change; they are stuck to the old system. But we’re working on it. Data breaches are another issue, but the framework is in place, and there’s a new National Data Protection Commission that has created an ecosystem for data protection, data backup, and data restoration.” The speaker also underlined that, as “e-governance eases doing business, it’s a game-changer in enhancing people’s well-being”. 

Dr. Moctar Seck, Head of the Innovation and Technology Section of UNECA and the program’s partner, commented on the importance of e-government platforms and paid closer attention to international regulation in this field:

“It’s important to implement e-government services all around the world since there are so many benefits to it. When it comes to digital tax systems, it contributes to the countries’ GDP. E-governance also provides more transparency and efficiency, and digital elections can help to overcome election collisions”. 

He noticed that the biggest challenge for African countries in terms of e-governance is “to make this system interoperable. Another one is to provide access to digital infrastructure to all the people, even in rural areas. Another issue is regulatory one: when we talk about data exchange, the question of data sovereignty emerges. So that’s why we need to provide data policy on a governmental level”.

E-governance promotion among citizens will help to remove constraints to the usage of digital services. This can be addressed through cooperation with local authorities, communities, and traditional institutions.

After the main part of the session, the moderator invited all the participants to ask their questions. The Q&A format made it possible to clarify a number of points raised in the reports. A remarkable comment was made by the International Telecommunication Union’s representative (ITU):

 “In Africa, we have no country without Internet connection. But still, for us, it’s important to ensure that we have a minimum of security. For example, if some person goes to a website, he must be sure that he won’t be redirected to another website. In some countries, we’ve already implemented the protocol we call DNSSEC. In Ethiopia, we’ve achieved everything we could in the field of domain names that we use for the URL and the e-mail addresses. What you can and should do right now is go and see if your systems are ready. Because, if not, you miss a lot of communication. So I call you to do it right now. It’s really good that we pay so much attention to net security, and I hope we will continue moving in that way”. 

An interesting remark was made by the expert of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers:

“In Nigeria, we face such a serious problem as the lack of assurance on one’s pension. So we need a lot of capacity building, knowledge and information sharing to overcome it. We need to make women and youth generation involved in data governance and AI”. 

Watch the full session on Youtube.