Policies, Committees, No Control: Inside Africa’s Digital Governance Gap
African governments are accelerating the use of digital platforms for taxation, procurement, healthcare, identity management, social protection and municipal services. However, the success of this transition depends on more than software, connectivity or data infrastructure. It also depends on who controls technology decisions, how public money is allocated, whether risks are monitored and whether digital investments improve services for citizens.
A systematic review titled “Antecedents, Decisions, and Outcomes for ICT Governance Adoption in the African Public Sector: A Systematic ReviewBased on McClelland Theory and ADO Framework,” published in the journal Computers, argues that this institutional layer remains uneven across the continent. Written by Samuel Simbarashe Furusa and Mampilo Phahlane of the University of South Africa, the study examines 40 academic and grey-literature sources published between 2010 and 2025 to explain why ICT governance reforms become embedded in some public institutions but remain largely symbolic in others.
It concludes that African public-sector organisations do not usually struggle because they lack governance frameworks. Many already have policies, committees, reporting arrangements and internationally recognised standards. The deeper weakness lies in unstable leadership, political interference, weak accountability, fragmented authority and poor cooperation.
Digital Systems Are Expanding Faster Than Institutional Control
ICT governance determines how public institutions make technology decisions and connect them to wider policy goals. It covers investment approval, cybersecurity, data protection, procurement, vendor management and responsibility for project failure. Weak governance can leave tax platforms unreliable, health databases disconnected, procurement systems vulnerable to misuse and social-protection platforms unable to reach eligible citizens. A digital service may appear modern while remaining poorly integrated or weakly supervised.
The review finds that ICT governance adoption across Africa is highly uneven. South Africa dominates both the evidence base and the development of formal governance structures, partly because of its Corporate Governance of ICT Policy Framework. Other countries, including Tanzania, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Egypt, have advanced digital-government initiatives, but progress has often relied on donor projects, centralised political backing or individual champions rather than durable institutional arrangements.
A government can launch digital platforms without building the capacity to govern them over time. When leadership changes, external funding ends or senior officials leave, projects may lose direction. The result is often a collection of disconnected systems rather than an integrated digital state.
The study challenges the assumption that adopting a recognised framework naturally leads to governance maturity. Formal rules may coexist with informal power structures, overlapping mandates and political influence. A steering committee may exist without controlling major investments. An ICT strategy may be approved without shaping departmental budgets. Reporting requirements may be met while operational fragmentation persists.
Governments should thus stop measuring digital progress mainly through the number of platforms launched or policies adopted. They also need to ask whether institutions possess the authority, skills, continuity and incentives required to make those systems work together.
The Biggest Barriers Are Human, Political and Relational
The review groups ICT governance factors into process, structural and relational mechanisms. Process mechanisms include standards, policies, auditing and strategic alignment. Structural mechanisms include committees, executive roles and decision rights. Relational mechanisms cover leadership, communication, trust, skills, organisational culture and cooperation.
Process-related factors represented 40% of the enablers identified in the literature. Relational mechanisms followed closely at 38%, while structural factors accounted for 22%. Frameworks and implementation tools may initiate reform, but relationships and leadership are almost equally important in sustaining it.
The pattern becomes more striking on the barrier side. Relational problems accounted for 48.9% of identified obstacles, compared with 27.7% for structural barriers and 23.4% for process barriers. Persistent problems included limited ICT-governance awareness, weak board competence, insufficient skills, resistance to change, poor communication, siloed operations, political interference and low strategic commitment.
These findings show why governments cannot solve governance failure simply by importing another international model. Frameworks such as COBIT, ITIL or ISO/IEC 38500 can clarify roles and controls, but they cannot create trust, prevent political interference or persuade departments to share information.
The authors use McClelland’s motivational theory to interpret the problem through three organisational needs: power, achievement and affiliation. Power relates to authority and control; achievement to performance and public value; affiliation to trust and collaboration.
Effective governance requires all three. Authority is necessary to approve investments and enforce standards. Achievement ensures that governance improves services rather than merely producing reports. Affiliation matters because digital systems usually cross departmental boundaries.
Problems arise when power overwhelms achievement and affiliation. Governance structures may then become tools for centralising control or demonstrating compliance rather than delivering public value. The theory is used as an interpretive lens, not direct proof of officials’ motivations, but it raises a useful policy question: are governance mechanisms improving outcomes, or mainly preserving authority and legitimacy?
Compliance on Paper Can Conceal Failure in Practice
The study distinguishes between adoption, maturity and outcomes. Adoption means introducing governance mechanisms such as policies, committees and standards. Maturity refers to how consistently those mechanisms influence behaviour and decisions. Outcomes concern whether governance improves services, controls risk, strengthens accountability or creates value.
These stages are often treated as interchangeable. A department may adopt a governance framework without institutionalising it. Even a formal process may fail to produce positive outcomes if political incentives, leadership instability or organisational resistance undermine implementation.
The review describes a recurring pattern of symbolic compliance. Institutions adopt recognised practices to satisfy regulations or external expectations but do not integrate them into daily operations. An agency may establish an ICT committee while major purchases continue through informal channels. It may publish a strategy while departments acquire incompatible systems. It may produce audit reports without correcting recurring weaknesses.
Decision-making patterns reinforce this concern. Process mechanisms accounted for 53% of governance decisions, while structural mechanisms represented 36%. Relational decisions, including shared accountability, collaboration and responsiveness, accounted for only 11%. The imbalance is revealing. Institutions appear more willing to decide which standards to adopt, how budgets should be controlled and where authority should sit than to address the relationships needed to make reforms work.
Where ICT governance is effective, however, the benefits are substantial. The review links stronger governance to better service delivery, cost efficiency, risk management, compliance, transparency, institutional trust and alignment between digital investments and policy priorities. These outcomes connect to SDG 16 on effective institutions and SDG 9 on resilient infrastructure and innovation. They also matter for health, education, financial inclusion and social protection because all increasingly depend on reliable digital systems.
The research is heavily concentrated in Southern Africa, especially South Africa, making continent-wide generalisation difficult. The review also relies mainly on English-languageresenting Francophone, Lusophone and locally published evidence. Its motivational mapping remains conceptual and has not been tested through interviews, surveys or longitudinal research
Africa Must Move from Compliance Theatre to Public Value
The study does not argue that formal governance structures are unnecessary. Clear responsibilities, oversight committees, risk controls and performance systems remain essential. Its warning is that these mechanisms cannot produce results without leadership continuity, professional capability and cooperative institutional behaviour.
Governments should first assess whether existing governance bodies possess real authority over budgets, procurement, architecture and project approval. Committees that cannot influence decisions offer little more than administrative cover. Technology spending should be linked to measurable outcomes such as service quality, system availability, cybersecurity, cost reduction and citizen access.
Chief information officers also need a stronger strategic role. Treating ICT as a support function isolates digital decisions from public policy. CIOs should work with finance, procurement, operations and service-delivery teams, while senior executives remain accountable for technology outcomes.
Development agencies and multilateral institutions should reconsider how they support digital-government programmes. Financing a platform without strengthening governance can deepen fragmentation and vendor dependence. Technical assistance should include institutional design, leadership development, procurement oversight, benefits tracking and cross-agency coordination.
Longer-term reform requires locally appropriate models. African governments need not reject global standards, but they should avoid assuming that imported frameworks will work unchanged in politically complex or renal administrative realities while preserving accountability, transparency and risk control
Future research should extend beyond South Africa, particularly into Central, West and Francophone Africa. Cross-country and longitudinal studies could examine how political cycles, leadership turnover, donor involvement and procurement incentives affect governance maturity. Researchers should also test whether stronger ICT governance leads to measurable improvements in citizen outcomes rather than focusing mainly on formal compliance.
- FIRST PUBLISHED IN:
- Devdiscourse
