A Proposed Framework for E-Government Knowledge Infrastructures for Africa’s Transition Economies

This paper proposes an empirically founded framework for building E-Government knowledge infrastructures in transition economies such as those in Africa. The proposed framework builds on the concepts of nomadic information environments. The framework, under the acronym NECE (Nomadic E-Government Co-Evolutionary) framework, caters for the three levels of government: national, regional and local. At the national level lies the responsibility of building Flexible Infrastructures. The regional level concentrates on the creation of nomadic networks. The local level addresses the fostering of confident communities. The framework recognizes explicitly the links and dependencies between the various levels. The strength of the framework is its systemic view in recognizing the roles of social, human resources, digital and physical resources required for addressing the possible social exclusion resulting from traditional “Western style” E-Government implementations in developing countries. Importantly, e-government should not be conceptualized primarily as from a technological perspective but as a tool to build of social, human, digital and physical resources in order to empower individuals, communities and whole societies.