Adoption of E-Government in developing countries: a case of Zimbabwe

Abstract

Even though there is a large amount of literature on the determinants of e-government adoption and use of digital services in developed countries, there is a dearth of e-government adoption literature in developing countries in general, and Zimbabwe in particular. This study used Technology Adoption Model (TAM) to look at how cultural factors influence the acceptance of e-government services in developing countries, using Zimbabwe as the case study. We adopted a survey research design and collected data from 500 respondents using a structured questionnaire. While the factors that slow the acceptance, adoption and use of e-government services in Zimbabwe are numerous, our results show that various cultural dimensions influenced people’s intent to use e-government services. The key contribution of our study is that the adoption and acceptance of e-government services is greatly influenced by cultural values of the end users and recipients of that technology. Based on our key findings, we recommend that technology start-up companies, software developers and government must consider the cultural values of different spaces and regions in the country when developing and deploying e-government services.