The main barriers to African digitalisation are believed to be high service costs, weak connectivity, and a lack of promotion for new services. Photo: File.
A survey conducted by the Cameroon-based technology company, We Are Tech Africa, has found that Africans want their Governments to give priority to the digitalisation of public administrations.
Some 60 per cent of respondents said their Governments should focus on modernising public administrations so that their daily life gets easier and governance is enhanced.
The second area of concern was education (47 per cent), followed by agriculture (32 per cent).
According to the respondents, the main barriers to African digitalisation were high service costs, weak connectivity, and a lack of promotion for new services.
The company said a 2022 report on Cameroon revealed that no data on digitisation was available “yet Cameroon has had a public administration digitisation project since 2019”.
“The public administration in the country has not yet overcome the challenges of slowness and excessive paperwork. Only the Department of Finance is attempting to streamline procedures through digitisation,” the company said.
It said that in an attempt to reverse this trend, a financing agreement had been signed earlier in the year between Minister of Public Service and Administrative Reform, Joseph Lé and the South Korean International Cooperation Agency.
“The objective is to instil in our mindset and way of doing things, a culture of modernisation, information and communication technologies, and even to train personnel in the use of computer tools,” Mr Lé said.
“The absence of digitalisation within public administrations hinders the efficient processing of documents and creates opportunities for corruption. This project aims to not only enhance efficiency, but will also result in substantial cost savings.”
Yaoundé, 14 September 2023
