Archives of Humanities & Social Sciences Research
- ISSN: 3065-3568
Okanga Boniface
Given the increasing embracement of internet, information and digital technologies across all aspects of the global society’s operations, this study evaluates how the optimisation of e-government technologies would leverage the effectiveness of e-democracy in the 21st Century. Using integrative review to extract and analyse multitudes of the existing studies, findings imply that as e-governance system has improved to entail the utilisation of internet technology, mobile devices, online polling and voting, social media and other digital platforms in the administration and governance of the processes for the implementation of various government policies, it is also influencing the evolution and development of the concept of e-democracy. However, as compared to the developed democracies like the US, Germany and UK, the major limitations of e-government as an antecedent for enhancing e-democracy in most of the developing economies in Africa were found to arise from the dictatorial government’s fear of the unknown, deterring effects of fake news and harmful propaganda, as well as inadequate resources to invest in the required e-government and e-democracy technologies. Considering that the government has managed to solve all its challenges of inadequate financial resources by prioritizing the importance for creating an effective e-democracy system, it is suggested in the Framework for enhancing the Effectiveness of E-democracy System that creating an effective e-democracy system would require government to consider four dimensions of e-democracy system that encompass technology, administrative, personnel, and data management and analytics.