Factors Affecting Adoption of e-Government in Zambia

Zambia has been implementing e-government model of government for close to 3 years now. This is because e-government has been identified and adopted as one of the most efficient vehicles for appropriate, transparent and inclusive / participatory decision making. Zambia has shown a higher propensity to indigenous knowledge systems which are full of inefficiencies, a lot of red tape in public service delivery, and prone to corrupt and inefficient practices. The adoption of e-Governance promises a sharp paradigm shift where public institutions will be more responsive and transparent, promote efficient Public Private Partnerships (PPP), and empower citizens by making knowledge and other resources more directly accessible. This paper has examined two cases from Zambia where ICT has been utilized in support of e-government initiatives. It has also assessed the challenges, opportunities, and issues together with e-government adoption criteria regarding successful encapsulation of e-government into the Zambian contextual environment. It has been found that lack of adequate ICT infrastructure and political will, provision of content in English other than local languages, lack of proper change management procedures, non-contextualization of e-government practices, etc., contribute much to the delay in appropriate e-government adoption in Zambia. Out of these challenges identified, the paper proposes a conceptual model which offers balanced e-government adoption criteria involving a combination of electronic and participatory services. The proposed conceptual model is a start-point for a model which can later be replicated to include the whole lot of Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries given the similarity in the contextual environment.