e-Participation seems to offer African states an opportunity to strengthen their democratic systems and processes through more direct public involvement in decision making. In this way improve the quality of planning and implementation, but also enhance legitimacy.

There has been significant innovation around e-participation over the past decade. A number of emerging technologies (e.g. generative artificial intelligence (AI)1) and methodologies (e.g. citizen assemblies2) promise new ways of supporting citizen engagement with government decision-making. There are also significant changes in
how public participation takes place. What does seem to characterise much of the recent change in how governments interact with publics is a growing influence from ‘civic tech’-led, bottom-up engagement as an alternative to the ‘gov tech’-led consultation processes typical of earlier e-participation eras. In the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) framework these ‘empowered’ forms of engagement include participatory budgeting, e-petitions and collaborative electoral platforms. For governance actors, this has meant a shift of interaction beyond government-owned portals into a diversity of online and social media spaces.

– By Plantinga, P., Dlamini, N., & Gordon, T.