A tale of two continents: Contents of African and Asian e-government websites Abebe Rorissa Department of Information Studies, University at Albany, State University of New York, Draper 113, 135 Western Avenue, Albany, NY 12222 arorissa@albany.edu Mohammed Gharawi Department of Informatics, University at Albany, State University of New York, 7A Harriman Campus, Suite 220, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12222 gharawima@yahoo.com Dawit Demissie Department of Informatics, University at Albany, State University of New York, 7A Harriman Campus, Suite 220, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12222 dd536519@albany.edu Abstract The digital divide is often discussed from the perspective of North and South and haves and have- nots. This is true of comparative studies on information and communication technologies (ICTs) and e- government. As a result, there is less research on the South-South digital divide and/or cross-national comparative studies that focus mainly on developing countries. This paper addresses this gap by comparing contents of African and Asian e-government service websites. Based on analyses of 582 African and 939 Asian e-government service websites, we present comparisons of the contents of websites from the two continents with respect to the type of site, type of service, features, online executable services, level/stage of development of e-government service, and e-government index. Overall, e-government service websites from the two continents have similar contents, save a few differences. 1. Introduction Asia and Africa are the first and second largest and most populous continents, respectively, with about half of the world’s total land area and a combined population of over 70% of the world’s population. Both have come a long way with respect to the adoption and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially Africa, more specifically Sub-Saharan Africa, which was once called a ‘technological desert’ [18]. Even though the rate of adoption and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in both Asia and Africa is not as high as that of North America or Europe, there are more Internet users (about 657 million) in Asia alone than anywhere else. However, in both continents, the Internet penetration rates (as a percentage of the total population) remain among the lowest even though, over the last eight years, the number of Internet users grew by 1030.2% and 475% in Africa and Asia, respectively (See Table 1). This is impressive given the fact that most countries in Africa, and some in Asia, face a number of obstacles, such as lack of infrastructure, low literacy rates, slow and low economic development, culture, and non-democratic forms of government. Table 1: A profile of the two continents Africa Asia World Population 975,330,899 3,780,819,792 6,710,029,070 Land area 11.7 million sq mi (20.41%) 17.2 million sq mi (30%) 57.31 million sq mi E-Readiness Index 0.2740 0.4467 0.4514 Web Measures index 0.1875 0.3725 0.3540 Human Capital index 0.5909 0.7916 0.7825 Infrastructure index 0.0529 0.1670 0.2104 E-Participation index 0.0952 0.2084 0.1909 Telecom infrastructure index 0.03211 0.179332 0.570928 Sources: (United Nations, 2007; Internet World Stats, 2009) [22, 11]. When it comes to information and communication technologies (ICTs) and e-government services, developing countries, such as those in Africa and Asia, face more than a mere dilemma. Their decisions whether to adopt ICTs and implement e-government services have economic, social, educational, and political implications and consequences, to mention a few. The reason why it is more than a mere dilemma is that if they decide to adopt and implement these ICTs and e-government services, to the extent that they invest their scarce resources, they will do so at the expense of other essential services and functions. If they decide not to do so, they miss the opportunity of becoming members of, and will be left behind by, the global information society (a society which makes extensive use of ICTs) and economy driven by technology more than ever. All signs point to the fact that all African and Asian countries have, in one form 1 Proceedings of the 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2010 978-0-7695-3869-3/10 $26.00 © 2010 IEEE