Introduction

To enhance efficiency and broaden access to essential government services, Kenya and Zambia have digitised government services such as identity management, immigration services, business registration, and taxation. These services are provided through platforms and initiatives like Kenya’s eCitizen and Zambia’s Smart Zambia. Both governments have taken deliberate measures to modernise public service delivery. For instance, Zambia’s 2023-2026 National Electronic Government Plan underscores efforts to modernise its digital infrastructure and integrate digital technologies into public service delivery, including deploying digital management systems in health, agricultural, and social protection services for socio-economic development and enhanced efficiency.¹ A notable initiative in efforts to strengthen the country’s digital public infrastructure is the integration of the SmartCarePro Electronic Health Record System, which is expected to transform electronic-Know-Your-Customer (eKYC) processes and improve identity management for public health systems.² While these initiatives are yielding results, two gender-specific barriers challenge equitable benefits for women i.e. limited digital literacy due to lower educational attainment and fewer opportunities for tech education; and restricted device access due to economic disparities and societal norms prioritizing male ownership of shared household devices. These interconnected factors bar the equitable enjoyment of benefits from the digital revolution. Thus, this article seeks to analyse the gendered impacts of government digital services, exploring digital divide, skills gaps, data deficiencies, AI-related inequalities, and barriers to women’s participation, while proposing gender-responsive actions to improve inclusivity in providing digital government services in Kenya and Zambia.

Digital Government Services in Kenya and Zambia

In Kenya and Zambia, digital government services are driving transformative changes in public administration. Kenya’s eCitizen platform, launched in 2014,³ allows citizens to access more than 20,000⁴ government services, including passport applications, tax filing, and business registration, through a single online portal or mobile app. The platform intends to integrate with the Kenyan Digital ID system, the latest iteration of which is known as Maisha Namba, to provide a secure, biometric-based digital identity to streamline verification across services from birth to death, enhancing efficiency and reducing fraud. However, a 2023 Kenyan study highlights a persistent gender digital divide, with men nearly twice as likely to own smartphones compared to women, exacerbating inequalities in accessing such platforms.⁵ Women’s lower smartphone ownership limits their engagement with digital services, particularly in rural areas where only 35% of women use advanced digital services compared to 54% of men, driven by disparities in digital literacy, device access, and gendered social norms.⁶

Another Kenyan digital platform, Ardhisasa was launched in 2021 by the Ministry of Lands and Physical Planning, to digitise land-related transactions such as title searches, ownership transfers, and development plan applications.⁷ However, Ardhisasa’s effectiveness is limited by its current availability in only a few counties and inability to capture property details where there exists no geospatial data, which can exclude some owners including women from property rights enforcement.⁸ The platforms promote efficiency but risk perpetuating inequalities, as digital access remains uneven, with women and marginalized groups facing barriers due to infrastructure gaps and socio-economic disparities.

Similarly, Zambia’s Smart Zambia initiative advances e-government and integrates health services, with a focus on improving efficiency.⁹ The SmartCare Pro system, deployed to over 750 facilities by 2024, streamlines electronic health records, enabling efficient patient data management and lab test processing through integration with other systems such as the DISA Lab system.¹⁰ The SmartCare Plus system further enhances healthcare delivery by allowing providers to digitally record and access patient information, though rural connectivity challenges limit its full adoption. Other services in the initiative include the e-Payslip system launched to digitize payroll for over 100,000 civil servants,¹¹ and an e-Customs system for more than 10 shipping ports, enhancing tax collection and logistics tracking.¹²

Zambia is also advancing its digital identity system through the Modular Open-Source Identity Platform (MOSIP), an open-source framework designed to provide secure, scalable, and cost-effective digital ID solutions. Since 2023, with support from a $100 million World Bank grant,¹³ Zambia has integrated MOSIP to enhance identity verification for services like healthcare and disaster relief, notably through the SmartCare Pro system.¹⁴ This initiative seeks to enhance data accuracy, streamline electronic Know-Your-Customer processes, and reduce duplicate records by leveraging National Registration Card data.¹⁵ By building local expertise, Zambia is reducing reliance on external support, paving the way for a more inclusive digital ecosystem. However, these advancements risk deepening gender and socio-economic inequalities due to limited smartphone access, digital literacy gaps, and bureaucratic hurdles, particularly for rural women and single mothers. Their success depends on addressing gender disparities to ensure women, particularly in rural areas, can fully engage with these services.

Challenges to Gender Equity in Digital Government Services

1. The Digital Divide

The digital divide, characterised by disparities in access, economic constraints, cultural norms, and education, significantly hinders women’s participation in digital government services in Kenya and Zambia. In Sub-Saharan Africa, women face significant disparities in mobile technology access, being 8% less likely than men to own a mobile phone, 13% less likely to own a smartphone, and 32% less likely to use mobile internet.¹⁶ In Kenya, a 15% gender gap persists in mobile internet adoption, with 64% of women using mobile internet compared to 75% of men, driven by barriers like affordability and digital literacy.¹⁷ Similarly, in Zambia, the SmartCare Pro system’s reliance on MOSIP-based digital ID verification for patient registration can exclude women, particularly single mothers or those in rural areas, who may lack national IDs or face delays in obtaining them due to economic or logistical barriers, further deepening gender disparities in healthcare access. As such, limited device ownership and unreliable rural internet connectivity often restrict women’s ability to use government digital services. Digitization of these services, reliant on smartphone access and internet connectivity, perpetuates economic impacts by favoring urban, wealthier, and male users who can afford devices and data, while women, particularly in rural areas, face higher financial barriers to participation.

2. Skills Gaps Limiting Digital Fluency

Despite extensive mobile network coverage in Kenya, with 98% of the population under 4G networks in 2023, over 65% remain unconnected to mobile internet, largely due to demand-side barriers such as limited digital literacy and affordability, which disproportionately affect women in rural and underserved communities.¹⁸ According to a 2024 GSMA report, addressing these barriers through digital skills programs and device cost reductions could reduce the usage gap to 51% by 2028, connecting an additional 10 million Kenyans, many of whom are women needing access to platforms like eCitizen for government services.¹⁹ The eCitizen platform’s user interface, while streamlined for services like tax filing or license applications, assumes a baseline digital fluency that many women lack, reinforcing gender biases as men, with higher exposure to tech education, navigate it more easily.

In Zambia, there are continued efforts to integrate ICT into education, yet a gender gap in advanced digital skills persists, particularly in rural areas where women face limited access to connectivity and training resources.²⁰ While a digital skills score of 41% for coding in schools and digital platforms shows progress, the curricula often neglect entrepreneurship and emerging technologies like AI, areas where women may be underrepresented due to systemic educational disparities.²¹ These skills gaps are often rooted in other divides, such as unequal economic access to advanced technological training, which limits women’s engagement with digital government services, necessitating targeted interventions to enhance digital literacy and ensure inclusive platform design that meets women’s practical needs. Policy gaps, such as the lack of gender-specific digital literacy programs in national ICT strategies, further entrench these disparities, requiring targeted investments in women-focused training to bridge the gap.

3. Data Gaps Obscure Gendered Impacts of Digital Government Services

The limited availability of gender-disaggregated data in African countries often hinders a clear understanding of how digital government services impact women, complicating the design of targeted interventions.²² In Kenya, while efforts like the Kenya Women’s Empowerment Index have increased gender data production, comprehensive insights into women’s usage of platforms like eCitizen, including for maternal health services, remain scarce due to persistent data gaps. For example, there is little data on whether single mothers face delays or denials on eCitizen when applying for services like birth certificates due to incomplete paternal information, obscuring specific gendered impacts.

In Zambia, e-Government evaluations rarely include gender-specific outcomes, with the 2022 Inclusive Digital Economy Status Report noting a 34% gender digital divide but lacking detailed metrics on women’s engagement with services.²³ This data scarcity makes it difficult to assess whether services such as e-agriculture tools effectively reach female farmers, who face broader digital access barriers in rural areas. The absence of robust gender-disaggregated data also masks economic impacts, such as whether women incur higher costs to access digital platforms due to limited device ownership or reliance on paid intermediaries. In Zambia’s health sector, digitisation challenges disproportionately affect women, including caregivers, due to limited device access and digital literacy, though specific impacts are underexplored.

The African Union’s Digital Transformation Strategy (2020-2030) underscores the need for gender-disaggregated data to inform equitable policymaking. Yet, current gaps contribute to service designs that often fail to address women’s unique needs, perpetuating inequalities that affect women. Addressing these gaps requires policy interventions, such as mandating gender-specific data collection in e-government evaluations and enforcing privacy protections to safeguard women’s data on platforms like eCitizen.

Proposed Gender-Smart Interventions

To ensure women fully benefit from government digital services, Kenya and Zambia must adopt gender-responsive strategies that address the identified challenges comprehensively. Closing the digital divide requires subsidising devices and data for women, particularly in rural areas, and expanding infrastructure like Kenya’s National Optical Fibre Backbone Initiative (NOFBI) to improve rural internet access. Developing mobile-friendly, offline-capable platforms can further enhance accessibility, especially for women facing economic burdens from device costs, data, or bureaucratic hurdles. Further, it is necessary to conduct advocacy campaigns to challenge patriarchal norms that restrict women’s engagement in skills development in the technological arena, countering gender biases in platform designs which assume digital fluency, more common among men.

To boost skills, both countries should scale women-focused programs like Kenya’s Ajira Digital and Zambia’s Women in Tech, integrating STEM and AI training into school curricula to inspire girls early and address the leaky pipeline of digital skills among women. It is also crucial to fill data gaps, in order to fully understand the extent of the gender gaps in access to digital government services among Kenyan and Zambian women.

The African Union’s Digital Transformation Strategy urges the collection and publication of gender-disaggregated data to track women’s engagement and barriers in order to inform policy making. Thus, increased investment in the collection and analysis of such data would greatly empower efforts to reduce skills and access gaps faced by women with regard to digital literacy and services, building inclusive digital governance ecosystems in Kenya and Zambia.

Conclusion

Government digital services in Kenya and Zambia offer immense potential to transform public service delivery and empower citizens, but persistent gender inequalities threaten to leave women behind. Fueled by limited access, economic constraints, and cultural norms, the digital divide restricts women’s engagement with digital government services such as Kenya’s eCitizen and Smart Zambia. Skills gaps, rooted in low STEM participation, and data deficiencies further obscure women’s challenges. This leaves many of the data gaps unaddressed, entrenching further inequalities affecting women and girls. These multifaceted educational, economic, cultural, and safety-related factors limit women’s participation in the digital economy. These barriers result in economic impacts, as women, particularly in rural areas, incur higher costs for devices, data, or intermediaries to access services, reinforcing inequities. Policy gaps, including the absence of gender-specific digital literacy programs and robust data privacy frameworks, exacerbate these challenges. This study recommends subsidized cost of devices, skills training, data collection, and women’s involvement in design, to enable both countries to build inclusive digital governance ecosystems.

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