Digital public governance and corruption: Analysis of a two-way relationship in Africa

Abstract

The objective of this study is to assess the two-way relationship between the level of public sector digital governance and corruption in a sample of African countries. We use a multilevel mixed-effects regression model on data from the World Bank and Transparency International between 2020 and 2022. Previous literature has evaluated the effect of government digitization on institutional quality. However, because of the high level of corruption in African countries, this study is the first to also assess the effect of corruption on the development of digitized public governance systems. The results show that the development of digital governance has a significantly negative bidirectional relationship with corruption. All the digital governance indices have a negative relationship with the level of corruption. Despite this, corruption does not significantly affect the quality of the digital public service allocated and citizens’ commitment to using digital procedures.