Mobile technology, citizen co-production and public service delivery in Uganda: a policy and practice review introducing the Digitally Mediated Municipal Co-production Framework

This Policy and Practice Review introduces the Digitally Mediated Municipal Co-production Framework (DMMCF), a formally specified five-layer model that synthesises the current state of scholarship on how mobile technology may generate public value through citizen co-production in sub-Saharan African municipalities, and translates that synthesis into actionable policy and practice guidance. The framework is offered as a conceptual and propositional contribution that organises existing evidence into reform-relevant recommendations and still requires empirical validation, rather than as an already-tested model. It advances three contributions intended to extend international scholarship and to inform governance practice. First, it moves beyond technology-adoption research by specifying five co-production mechanisms through which mobile access may create public value: reporting, monitoring, payment, community mobilisation and feedback evaluation. Second, it integrates Moore’s public value theory with digital governance and co-production research to explain how mobile platforms may alter the legitimacy, accountability and responsiveness of local government in low-capacity settings. Third, it specifies a recursive causal architecture incorporating trust accumulation loops, institutional learning pathways, causal asymmetry and non-linear threshold effects, grounded in organisational learning and political trust scholarship, thereby extending the predominantly linear frameworks that currently dominate digital governance research. Bushenyi Municipality, an urbanising secondary city of approximately 46,000 residents in south-western Uganda, serves as an illustrative analytical context rather than an empirical case study; the diagnostic observations reported here are drawn from published policy documents, official statistical sources and secondary literature. Comparative evidence from Kenya, Rwanda, India and Brazil is examined to explore the framework’s transferability and to derive cross-context policy lessons. Four formally stated propositions, a mixed-methods research agenda and a structured implementation matrix are advanced for empirical testing and for use by policymakers and practitioners. Digital inclusion, network quality, administrative capacity and political commitment are identified as the critical moderating boundary conditions that may determine whether digital participation becomes empowering or exclusionary.