By: Lance Williams, Public Sector Lead at SAP Africa

African governments face two powerful converging forces this year: a rapid acceleration in digital government initiatives, and one of the most intense election cycles in the continent’s recent history.

At least 24 countries went to the polls in 2024. A further 17 held elections in 2025. And 2026 continues the trend, with landmark contests in Ethiopia, Zambia, Uganda, and South Africa’s municipal elections. What each of the countries holding elections in 2026 have in common is expressed public support at the highest levels of government for the role of technology to improve citizens’ lives.

Across the continent, governments are investing heavily in digital identity systems, e-government platforms, and AI-enabled public services. The result is a profound shift in how governments function and how citizens engage in the democratic process. In the most recent UN e-Government Development Index (EGDI), Africa increased its score by 4.8% between 2022 and 2024. Mauritius and South Africa joined an elite group of countries with a very high EGDI, a first for the continent.

This is significant because digital government is not just about digitising and modernising administrative tasks but equipping governments with the ability to respond faster, serve better, and build stronger, more participatory relationships with citizens. These capabilities are becoming increasingly important given that citizens judge governments not only on policy intent, but on visible delivery outcomes.

From ambition to Digital Public Infrastructure

The scale of investment into digital government initiatives indicates that governments today see digital capabilities as core national infrastructure. The World Bank’s Digital Economy for Africa (DE4A) initiative has already delivered around $9 billion in projects across 37 countries. Mobile technologies alone contributed $220 billion to Africa’s GDP in 2024, with further network investment expected to reach $77 billion by 2030.

This investment is paying dividends as is evidenced by several fundamentally transformational initiatives. In Ethiopia, the Fayda digital identity programme already has over 15 million enrolled out of a target of more than 90 million citizens. South Africa’s digital government services initiative (MyMzansi) aims to transform government Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) through the implementation of a Digital ID, Data Exchange, and the first government payment and service integration projects. From 2028, MyMzansi intends to scale the technologies to the broader public sector, including health, education and business services.

The World Bank-funded Rwanda Digital Acceleration Project is reported to be approximately 55% complete and already fast-tracking broadband access, public service digitisation and strengthening the foundations for a single-login digital identity experience. Kenya offers possibly the continent’s most mature evidence of digital governance impact with its eCitizen platform, which now provides more than 22,000 government services online.

For citizens across the continent, the impact is tangible through improved access to critical services, more targeted social protection systems, and greater financial inclusion. For governments, the dividend is improved fiscal control, higher transparency, and better ability to allocate scarce resources where they have the greatest public impact

A structural shift in how governments operate

Governments are increasingly looking to integrate data, applications, and AI into unified environments that allow them to scale services, improve decision-making, and respond faster to change. The ability to connect budgets, programmes, and citizen data in real time represents a structural shift in how governments operate.

This is a critical shift given their role in shaping nearly every citizen outcome. Health systems depend on the efficient moving of medicines, people, funding and information. Public safety depends on coordination across departments, faster access to reliable data, while meeting sustainability goals requires better planning, stronger monitoring, and the ability to align policy, spending, and implementation. In each case, disconnected systems slow governments down and limit their impact, while connected systems improve their ability to act.

Here, foundational technologies such as ERP, cloud and AI are proving central to governments’ digitisation drives. ERP systems help governments unify core functions such as finance, procurement, human resources, grants, and programme management. Cloud environments provide the flexibility and resilience needed to scale digital services quickly and securely. AI adds another layer of value by helping public institutions analyse large volumes of data, identify patterns earlier, automate routine tasks, and support better policy and service decisions.

Bringing these technologies together creates a system where every decision informs the next to significantly improve citizen experiences, and which has the potential to contribute to better service delivery outcomes. Equally important, it creates the controls, auditability and resilience needed to operate in an era of cyber risk, fiscal constraint and elevated citizen expectations

From digital ambition to measurable delivery

The success of digital government initiatives will ultimately be measured by their demonstrable ability to serve people better.

Trust grows when citizens can access services more easily, receive information more quickly, and engage government through more responsive channels. When public institutions can draw on integrated data and analytics, they are better positioned to identify service gaps, respond to emerging needs, and allocate resources more effectively. Technology, in this sense, becomes an enabler of a more capable and more accountable government.

Countries making the most significant progress are showing that digital transformation works best when it is tied to practical outcomes. Digital identity drives inclusion, AI supports better decision-making, and ERP and cloud modernise administration and improve financial controls. The opportunity now exists for governments to build on these foundations with platforms that are secure, compliant, designed to scale and are future-fit.

Public institutions need technology environments that can integrate data across functions, support mission-critical processes, and adapt quickly to changing citizen and policy needs. They need the ability to improve productivity, optimise service delivery, and enhance policy decisions without adding new layers of complexity.

Critically, digital government cannot succeed without resilience. Beyond day-to-day efficiency, governments require continuity, cyber preparedness, and the ability to scale services safely during spikes in demand, whether driven by elections, emergencies, or economic shocks. Platforms must therefore be engineered for reliability and recovery, not only functionality.

Africa’s digital government push is about capacity, and whether governments can use technology to become more agile, more connected, and more responsive. In a year shaped by elections across the continent, digital transformation has become a civic priority as well as an administrative one.

The governments that will stand out are those that move from “digital projects” to “digital public infrastructure”: platforms that are trusted, secure, interoperable, and designed to deliver measurable outcomes at national scale.