Public Management (427)
In 2020, the Chadian government launched its 10-year digital development strategy. To ensure the successful implementation of that strategy, the country is signing strategic partnerships for high-impact contributions.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) recently approved financing for the digitization of Chad’s public services and the deployment of the country’s information system. The approval was disclosed by Chadian ICT Minister Idriss Saleh Bachar, last April 11, during an audience he granted to Deloitte and TACTIS experts. The experts were commissioned by the EIB to carry out the feasibility studies of Chad Digital Transformation Project, which includes the two components mentioned above.
According to Minister Idriss Saleh Bachar, the EIB plans to invest €150 million in the project, which also includes the extension of telecom access in rural areas, an essential component for digital inclusion.
The financial support falls within the framework of a cooperation agreement signed by Chad and the EIB, in December 2020, to accelerate digitization and rural connectivity. During the signing ceremony, Idriss Saleh Bachar explained that “high impact digitization investment” was “essential to boost (...) economic growth and social progress in landlocked Chad.”
The December 2020 agreement was signed five months after the Chadian government validated its 2020-2030 strategic digital development plan, during a workshop held from July 15 to 16, 2020.
With the deployment of its information system, Chad wants to improve the efficiency of collaboration between its institutions. Meanwhile, the digitization of public services is expected to enhance the quality of services it offers citizens.
Ruben Tchounyabe
For a long time, many public actors have launched health platforms that did not help efficiently take care of patients across Morocco. Now, the government wants to change things, as it is more concerned about inclusive healthcare.
During a public communication on Saturday, April 9, Khalid Ait Taleb (photo), the Moroccan Minister of Health and Social Protection, announced the upcoming launch of a national e-health system. It will provide citizens equal access to health records and other online services.
Through the new platform, the government wants to put an end to the existing fragmented e-health system, set up by university hospitals, regional health authorities, and various national health programs, said Khalid Ait Taleb. Indeed, nationwide, two programs have established electronic platforms: the National Maternal and Child Health Program and the Tuberculosis Program.
The idea of an integrated national e-health system is a recommendation of the Mohammed V University of Rabat. In a summary report on e-health in Morocco prepared by its e-health innovation center, the academic institution assessed the national health system and identified opportunities and challenges for e-health solutions that match the digital transformation strategy undertaken by the government over the past 20 years.
According to the Minister of Health and Social Protection, during the Covid-19 crisis, innovative e-health solutions boosted the resilience and responsiveness of the country's health system. The official added that telemedicine and online access to health services are in line with the country's legal framework for the protection of personal data and the practice of medicine.
Ruben Tchounyabe
Côte d’Ivoire’s Ministry of Digital Economy launched, Thursday (April 7), in Daloa, a digital platform for agricultural services. Dubbed AgriStore, the platform will help improve farmers’ productivity and facilitate commercial relationships in the agriculture value chain.
"Our agriculture sector must capitalize on digitization to improve operations in its value chains,” said Minister of Economy Roger Félix Adom (photo, left), at the launch ceremony attended by his peers of the Ministries of Agriculture and Promotion of Good Governance.
In collaboration with the National Agency for Support to Rural Development (ANADER), AgriStore will provide agro-meteorological information and agricultural advice to its users. To facilitate the AgriStore’s operations, the operational capacities of the Ivorian marketing assistance board (OCPV) have been strengthened to cover all the areas served by the digital platform, informs OCPV coordinator Adjoumani Boffoué. That way, he explains, the assistance board will collect information on the available stocks, their location, and prices for listing on AgriStore.
AgriStore was developed in the framework of the Digital Solutions Project for Opening Up Rural Areas and E-Agriculture (PSDEA). Funded to the tune of XOF37 billion (US$61.3 million) by the International Development Association (IDA), the development of that platform started in November 2018. It aims to make the Ivorian agriculture sector efficient and competitive by reducing production costs and improving quality.
According to the PSDEA coordinator in charge of digital services, Abdoul Karim Koné, farmers registered on the platform will periodically receive market alerts (SMS and voice messages) in the languages most spoken in the project areas. The market alerts will provide information on rice, corn, cassava, yam, plantain, shea, chicken, guinea fowl, and vegetables. The platform’s services are entirely free, he stresses.
AgriStore will cover ten administrative regions with high agricultural production, namely Haut Sassandra, Marahoué, Bounkani, Poro, Tchologo, Bagoué, Kabadougou, Folon, Gôh and Loh-Djiboua. To ensure the success of the process, required investments will be made in rural connectivity, digital services, and rural road rehabilitation, the Minister of the Digital Economy informs.
Ruben Tchounyabe
In Kenya, transactions at the Mombasa tea auction house are now exclusively performed online through the electronic portal iTTS (Integrated Tea Trading System). With the US$2.12 million portal, the Mombasa Tea Auction House officially ends its physical interactions with tea traders.
For Arthur Sawe, chairperson of the East African Tea Trade Association (EATTA), the portal funded by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), will boost tea traders' and farmers’ benefits by reducing operating costs.
“The digitization seeks to fill gaps in the current procedures, which are done manually including membership and cataloging,” he added
According to Morgens Strunge Lursen, Councilor at the Danish embassy in Kenya, "the launch of the iTTS is particularly exciting because it helps position such a critical sector for future growth and success by driving efficiency and supporting both increased traceability and information exchange."
The Mombasa Tea Auction House serves Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania, Malawi, Burundi, Ethiopia, DRC, Rwanda, Madagascar, and Uganda. Its digitization, which led to the creation of the iTTS portal, began in May 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. It helped the industry respect social distancing requirements by allowing buyers to place their tea bids online. After a two-year pilot phase, the iTTS portal was launched on March 31, 2022.
According to a release announcing the launch, “in time, iTTS is expected to shorten the pre-auction, auction and post-auction stages; create the potential for increased frequency in trading volumes; reduce the tea trading cycle by about 65 percent from the current 45 to 60 days to less than a month; and, fast track payments to farmers and reduce the need to take loans to finance farming operation.”
Users will only need connected devices (phones for instance) to track the tea they bought through auctions from factories to shipping companies. The portal also includes features allowing resellers to analyze global market trends. According to Kenya's Permanent Secretary for the East African Community, Kevit Desai, “the manual procedure involves middlemen, producers, warehouses, brokers, buyers. (...) The trickle-down effect was that farmers had little say in the prices of their tea but the new system is inclusive, and farmers will benefit immensely.”
The iTTS “will ensure that stakeholders of the tea auction, including farmers, buyers, and sellers receive real-time information on what is happening on the auction bourse, which will boost confidence in the Process,” concludes EATTA Managing Director, Edward Mudibo.
Ruben Tchounyabe
ICTs have many goals, including the reduction of time needed to collect and process data. The project, in this form, gives the State more flexibility in how it uses collected data.
Seychelles will start its first nationwide digital census on April 22, 2022. It will collect data on its population, households, and voters, said on April 5 the deputy director-general of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Helena Butler-Payette. Unlike previous years where the census was done using forms to be filled, this year it will be fully digital.
“One of the biggest changes in the way we do things resides in the digitalization of census,” said Butler-Payette while adding that training sessions, for about 500 door-to-door surveying agents, have already started.
Since it became independent, Seychelles has carried out six census operations; the first two in 1977 and 1987. The following censuses (1994, 1997, 2002, and 2010) focused on meeting national needs, especially the delineation of administrative borders. According to the NBS, Seychelles had 99,728 residents in 2021, 0.8% more than the figure recorded in 2020. This year’s census should have taken place in 2020 (it takes place every 10 years) but it was postponed to 2022 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In addition to data on the population and households, agents deployed will also gather voters’ data. Commenting on the operation, Helena Butler-Payette said it is better to use the same resources now to carry out the two surveys instead of wasting money doing both separately. Overall, the government plans to spend 904,000$ on the operation.
The NBS believes that conducting the survey digitally would allow results to be obtained more rapidly. “Before, it took us nearly a year to draw reports from the data we collected during the census, but this time, it will take us only weeks or months,” the NBS official declared.
Ruben Tchounyabe
Cameroon is currently moving to dematerialize and streamline civil service procedures. On Wednesday, during a press briefing in Yaoundé, Minister of Public Service and Administrative Reform Joseph Le (photo) announced a set of measures in that regard. According to the government official, the 2022 finance law includes a budget line dedicated to the acquisition of tech equipment specifically dedicated to the authentication of various diplomas.
The equipment will be a collaborative platform allowing collaboration between the Ministry of Public Service, the Ministry of Public Health, and the Ministries of Primary, Secondary, and Higher Education.
“With just one click, I can find all the information I need right from my office,” explains Joseph Le. He also announces the digitization of the documents that make up the integration files of graduates of teacher training colleges from the first week after the end of their training.
Few years ago, Cameroon acquired an IT system for integrated management of state personnel (SIGIPES). However, some civil servants usually spend the first years of their careers without some salaries and bonuses. For instance, from January to March 2022, a strike organized by secondary school teachers disrupted classes. The teachers were denouncing delays in the payment of their salaries and bonuses.
In response to this protest movement, the President of the Republic, Paul Biya, instructed the optimization of the civil servants’ management system. For the Minister of the Public Service, the challenge causing delays in the payment of the salaries and bonuses demanded by the teachers is the authentication of various diplomas as well as recognition and equivalence of educational qualifications. Also, the procedure for the integration of teachers who graduated from teacher training colleges is not streamlined, he adds.
According to the government, the reforms announced will reduce the time it takes for civil servants’ files to be effectively processed to reach the central administration. Currently, it takes 25 to 30 months. However, with the announced digitization, all the involved administration will receive the files at the same time and the processing and matriculation processes will start at the same time.
Once the procedures are dematerialized and streamlined, graduates from teachers’ training colleges will no longer have to wait for two to three years to be matriculated into the civil service. Instead, they will just have to wait for “45 to 90, maybe less than that,” assures Minister Joseph Le.
Ruben Tchounyabe
In Africa, governments have been on the move, since 2019, to accelerate digital transformation. For that purpose, they are putting appropriate frameworks in place to facilitate the shift.
Congo plans to create a digital development agency. The draft project was presented during the March 6, 2022, Ministerial council. The aim is to use the agency as a tool to accelerate the country’s digital transition. The agency will be created by transforming the Directorate-General for the Development of the Digital Economy into a public administrative institution.
For Léon Juste Ibombo (photo), Minister of Posts, Telecommunications and the Digital Economy, "digital transition (...) requires significant investments, particularly in infrastructure, networks, equipment, content…”
In that regard, the planned agency (which will be an autonomous agency) will support digital projects, optimize the digital transition models chosen by institutions and implement new technologies in the national territory. The bill consecrating the creation of Congo’s agency for the development of the digital agency will soon be submitted to parliament for review and adoption.
The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformation in the world. The pandemic prompted Congo, like many African countries, to take action for the development of its digital economy. Examples include the creation of an African Center for Artificial Intelligence Research (Caria) in February and the establishment of a legal framework governing startups’ operations.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
This year, Kenya’s National Council for Persons with Disabilities (NCPWD) will roll out its new member identification system. Developed by the Ministry of Health, the new system is intended to correct the flaws of the old system. It will specifically curb fraud, improve reporting structure for accountability and generate adequate socio-economic data.
“Many people have discovered the support given to PWDs and they have registered as members of NCPWD, even those with no disability record, to enjoy the privileges like receiving tax exemption for life,” explained NCPWD Executive Director, Harun Hassan. The official was in Kisumu during the training of County disability medical assessment teams on how to use the new system.
The old system will become obsolete by 2023, indicated Daniel Njuguna, an NCPWD ICT expert, during the same training session. He added that it had no guidelines standardizing the medical disability assessment process, sometimes resulting in information discrepancy and inaccurate records.
According to Douglas Kitut, a representative of the Ministry of Health, there are approximately 600,000 people with disabilities in Kenya. The majority have physical, visual, hearing, learning, mental, and chronic progressive disabilities. In 2021, the country raised US$15.5 million to help them deal with the impacts of the coronavirus crisis.
Since 2009, the NCPWD has been implementing identification reforms to improve its services. The new system appears thus as a new milestone in the process. To migrate its members to the new system, the council is currently carrying out a mass identification campaign across the country. After the campaign, persons with disabilities will receive smart cards. To verify the authenticity of the cards, they will also have QR Codes.
The identification process will bring the services offered by the NCPWD closer to the population, explained Harun Hassan. According to the latter, it will allow stakeholders to generate real-time demographic data on different types of disabilities in Kenya. Then, county medical officers will be allowed to sign on behalf of the Director of Medical Services.
“This means that persons with disabilities will not have to travel to Nairobi to get their assessment reports signed before acquiring the card thus bringing this crucial service closer to the people,” he stressed.
The digitized system is also expected to streamline operations and ensure that only those who meet the required registration threshold are considered.
By digitizing its registration process, NCPWD plans to get integrated with other government agencies so that its members can access its services through Huduma centers or by visiting E-government and E-citizen portals.
Ruben Tchounyabe
In 2020, Ethiopia launched Digital Ethiopia 2025, its national development strategy. One of the focuses of that strategy is digital transformation to improve the efficiency of public services and facilitate access to online payment means.
On Monday, April 4, Ethiopia, through the Ministry of Innovation and Technology (MINT), signed a partnership agreement to integrate Mastercard’s payment service gateway into its e-services portal. Therefore, users can pay for public services using bank cards for the first time while Commercial Bank of Ethiopia will collect the payments on behalf of the government.
For Minister of Technology Belete Molla (photo), the partnership with Mastercard enables the country to “provide a versatile digital payments solution – customers with any bank card can use it. That means people can pay conveniently and safely wherever they are and at any time. It also enables us to improve revenue collection and achieve efficiencies—in turn, freeing up resources to improve service delivery.”
The partnership agreement follows a memorandum of understanding signed, in 2020, by the MINT and Mastercard. That memorandum aimed to support the government in digitizing payments and improving public services in line with Digital Ethiopia 2025, the national development strategy.
In the first phase of the project, only civil society organizations will be able to pay for operating licenses using any branded payment card.
“By supporting the Ethiopian government in the implementation of a world-class and innovative digital payments platform, we are collaborating to save resources, increase efficiencies, and deliver improved services to citizens. Soon, members of the Civil Society Organization will no longer need to carry cash, travel long distances, and stand in long queues at banks to pay for their licenses. Rather, they will be able to do it safely and conveniently online,” said Mark Elliott, Division President, Mastercard, Sub-Saharan Africa.
Muriel Edjo
Launched 10 years ago, the single window for foreign trade is one of the flagship projects in Kenya’s development program, Vision 2030. It has already helped secure millions of dollars in license/permit fees and correct the flaws of the manual system.
In August 2021, Kenya started upgrading the Kenya TradeNet System, its trade facilitation platform. According to Ukur Kanacho Yatani, the country’s Treasury Cabinet Secretary, the upgrade will be completed by the end of April 2022.
The government official made the revelation last March 31, during the first East African Trade Facilitation Summit, held in Nairobi under the theme “Re-imagining Trade Facilitation in an era of Technology.”
For Ukur Kanacho Yatani, with the upgrade, “some of the limitations” will be addressed, and “features that were lacking in the Kenya TradeNet system” will be added. They will then “promote the betterment of intra-regional trade as well as significantly make it easy to carry out trade,” he explained.
“As we launch the upgrade of the Kenya TradeNet System, which is also known as the Trade Facilitation Platform, the next 10 years are indeed promising to the trading community,” he added.
The Kenya TradeNet System is a single online platform through which actors involved in international trade and logistics can carry out various trade-related procedures like submitting documents to clear goods and pay taxes and duties.
Launched in January 2011, the system already includes 23 government agencies out of 38 targeted, 38 active insurance companies, 36 banks, nearly 1,529 clearing agents, 46 shipping agents and shipping companies, 29 container freight terminals, and five freight handling companies.
KenTrade, the agency in charge of the platform, reveals that since 2014, more than 3.3 million permits have been issued through the system while over 2.8 million unique consignment references (UCRs) have been processed. As of December 2021, the system had over 16,000 registered users. Partner government agencies were able to collect a little over Ksh3.5 billion (US$30.3 million) in license/permit fees from traders. Also, from May 1, 2018, to June 30, 2021, a total of 445,146 import declarations with values estimated at Ksh2.9 trillion were registered in the system.
Muriel Edjo
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Kintambo, a northwestern municipality in Kinshasa, DRC, will test a digital population registry system in cooperation with the Brussels-Capital Region. In the framework of that test, the municipality will carry out a digital identification program to register the population residing in the region.
The test project is funded by the Brussels Development Cooperation, managed by Brussels International. It is part of the cooperation agreement signed on Monday 21 March in Kinshasa by the Minister-President of the Brussels-Capital Region, Rudi Vervoot (photo, left), and the Governor of the city of Kinshasa, Gentiny Ngobila Mbaka (photo, right).
According to Corinne François, director of the Association of the City and Municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region (Brulocalis), a digital register containing an official record of the population "is important for democracy.”
The digital registry is "the foundation of everything. For instance, during elections, there could be fraudulent acts like counting the votes of dead people if there is no digital register. It is also an important tool to identify where to build a school, a hospital, etc…,” she added.
Belgian municipalities have been assisting Kinshasa in the improvement of its civil registration system since 2008. Thanks to the federal program "International Communal Cooperation" being coordinated since 2017, by the Association of the City and Municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region and the Union of Cities and Municipalities of Wallonia (UVCW), six Brussels municipalities (Brussels-City, Ixelles, Uccle, Watermael-Boitsfort, Woluwe-St-Lambert, Saint-Gilles) and seven Walloon municipalities (Court-St-Etienne, Flémalle, Herve, Namur, Olne, Waremme, and Seraing) have already partnered with a municipality in Kinshasa.
If the test planned in Kitambo proves successful, the digital population register could be extended to other municipalities and even to provinces. With a secure database of its population, the Congolese government will have valuable assets to devise effective socio-economic development strategies.
Muriel Edjo
Novissi, the social assistance program developed by NGO GiveDirectly, was implemented by the Togolese government to support poor communities during the coronavirus pandemic. US$22.5 million was distributed to 817,154 people in its framework.
Cash transfer program Novissi received the Special Recognition Award of the South by Southwest (SXSW) Innovation Show, held March 11-20 in Austin, Texas, USA. The program, termed MobileAid, set itself apart during the Covid-19 crisis. Indeed, in 2020, when the coronavirus was raging, Togo implemented Novissi to assist the less privileged.
Four conditions were required to access government assistance. First, the applicant must be a Togolese residing in the country. Secondly, he/she must be an employee whose job was affected by the coronavirus response measures issued by the government. The third and the fourth conditions were respectively being aged over 18 and having a voters card.
Applicants meeting all those four conditions can self-enroll by dialing the USSD code *855# and following the enrollment procedure.
Male beneficiaries used to receive monthly stipends of XOF10,500 (US$17.76), against XOF 12,250 for women. Beneficiaries were advised to use the stipends to buy food and water, pay for water and electricity bills, or purchase airtime.
Developed by the non-governmental organization GiveDirectly, Novissi was born out of the Togolese government's desire to guarantee a minimum income for the poor amid the coronavirus pandemic that forced travel restrictions.
Overall, 1,631,101 people self-enrolled on Novissi but only 817,154 were approved. They included 516,847 women and 300,307 men. According to the Togolese government, The beneficiaries received a total of XOF13.308 billion.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
The LOGIRAD is DRC’s new integrated public finance management system. It was adopted last Friday, March 25th, in Kinshasa, during the council of ministers.
The new digital system is aimed at making the collection of taxes, duties, and fees more secure for the central government. Additionally, LOGIRAD will help the government optimize domestic revenue mobilization, knowingly by helping it better manage administrative and legal disputes, protect the tax collection circuit, limit human intervention and tackle fraud.
Per Article 3 of the tax law No. 13/003 of February 23, 2013, amended and supplemented by Article 47 of the 2022 finance law, the Democratic Republic of Congo will issue a statutory law, making LOGIRAD the compulsory platform for tax and non-tax procedures.
In the country’s 2022-2024 medium-term budgetary framework presented in September 2021, the Ministry of Finance makes LOGIRAD a key asset in the public revenues’ protection arsenal. The digital system is expected to heavily contribute to the collection of additional revenues for the implementation of essential socio-economic development projects.
According to DRC’s medium-term budgetary framework, provincial governments’ overall expenditure budget over 2022-2024 amounts to some FC89,999.8 billion (US$44.7 billion) against FC74,797.8 billion for the central government.
Muriel Edjo
Burundi validated last March 17 the final plan of its digital tax collection project. The plan was validated by provincial governors, council tax officers, and communal administrators during a workshop organized by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
The final plan provides for the adjustment of the legal framework, identification and allocation of identification numbers to every taxpayer, and the acquisition and deployment of IT equipment. It also plans for the connection of every municipality to the national power and internet network as well as training for the communal staff that will be in charge of daily communal revenue collection. The plan’s pilot phase will be launched next July in sixty townships.
For Niteretse Martin (photo), permanent secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs, the collection of communal tax revenues is being digitized to improve efficiency, boost transparency and improve the relationship between the public administration and citizens by offering efficient services to users.
The March 17 workshop is the ultimate result of instructions issued by President Evariste Ndayishimiye at the end of the January 4-5, 2022, government retreat. After the retreat, on January 27, another workshop was organized to validate the diagnostic assessment of communal tax collection in the country. The digitalization of communal tax collection is perceived as a solution to poor communal management. The latter translates into financial losses for the government. However, the authorities expect digitalization to guarantee good governance and steady communal tax incomes.
Ruben Tchounyabe