Administrative corruption is a pervasive problem and a major threat to economic and social development around the world, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa which lags behind other regions in various development indicators and is seen as one of the most corrupt regions globally. This paper examines a hypothesis that digital government – the use of digital technology to transform public administration organizations and their relationships with citizens, businesses and each other – helps reduce administrative corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa. To this end, the paper relates the United Nation’s e-Government Development Index (EDI) and the Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) for 45 countries in the region in the period from 2012 to 2016, performing linear regression with EDI as an independent and CPI as a dependent variable. The estimated results show that the effects of digital government adoption on corruption reduction are statistically significant, with 37% of corruption reduction due to digital government development. The paper further explores the nature of this relationship using the case of Ethiopia, whose performance according to the EDI and CPI indexes improved slightly over the 2012-2016 period. As part of this case, the paper examines common applications such as e-procurement or e-tax that cut horizontally across ministries. Our findings suggest that the adoption of digital government has the potential for reducing administrative corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa but realizing such potential require strengthening of law enforcement and anti-corruption institutions, and political will.
Authors
- Yelkal Walle,
- dr Tomasz Janowski link open in new tab ,
- Dr. Elsa Estevez
Additional information
- Category
- Aktywność konferencyjna
- Type
- publikacja w wydawnictwie zbiorowym recenzowanym (także w materiałach konferencyjnych)
- Language
- angielski
- Publication year
- 2019
