E-governance in Eastern and Southern Africa: a Webometric study of the Governments' websites

Abstract

This paper explores the adoption of one of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools, i.e. the Internet and more particularly, the World Wide Web, by Eastern and Southern African governments as a means of facilitating interactions between the state and its citizens. It was observed that most governments in the region have constructed their own Web sites, some of which are up to date. English is the most commonly used language to prepare the web sites. Other findings include: foreign missions recorded the highest number of web pages followed by political parties; the .com or .co Top Level Domain (TLD) generated most web pages followed by .ac or .edu in each country; most governments provide contact information as opposed to sitemaps and feedback forms which recorded relatively few postings; governments with few webpages and large quantities of in-links (including self-links) recorded high Web Impact Factors (WIFs); and only the South African government provided links to other Eastern and Southern African governments. Ethical issues regarding the analyzed variables as well as conclusions and recommendations are provided.