Implementing e-participation in Africa: What Roles can Public Officials Play?

Abstract

A key question in e-participation is what roles public officials can play to harness the benefits of emerging technologies and practices, mitigate potential harms and, ultimately, ensure more inclusive and effective public involvement in decision-making. This paper presents results from a desktop analysis of e-participation projects from the African continent to highlight the diversity of public official roles and associated skills and perspectives that would be relevant to e-participation implementation. The identified roles and activities range from legal specialists developing guidelines to comply with personal data protection legislation, and stakeholder managers designing models of collaboration with commons-based platforms; to communications officials learning how to moderate social media conversations, and technology developers exploring new ways of verifying online identity.