Prospects and Challenges of E-Government in Black Africa

Most scholars' perspectives on e-government development in Africa have tended to be monolithic. This has been irrespective of the fact that African nations have been adopting relatively different approaches to e-governance. Though the dominant tendency among them has been to struggle to have a certain amount of web presence through the creation of e-government web portals, each African country has designed its own (customized) e-government initiatives. It will therefore be very interesting to explore the extent to which the prospects and challenges of e-governance in Africa have been varying across countries. This chapter attempts to fill this gap in knowledge through a comparative study of e-government implementation in Nigeria and Cameroon. The chapter is divided into three main parts. The first part provides a conceptual definition and a brief history of e-government. The second part explores the phenomena of ICTs and e-governance in Africa while the last part provides a comparative perspective on the implementation of e-government in Nigeria and Cameroon.