Exploring issues underlying citizen adoption of eGovernment initiatives in developing countries: The case of Tanzania

Adoption plays an important role in the success of eGovernmentinitiatives.Low adoption, particularly by citizens, indicates inadequate utilization and rejection of the initiatives by the intended users. This may leadinto failure of eGovernmentinitiatives. This is particularly important in the context of developing countries such as Tanzania where eGovernmentis a newly imported innovation. It is therefore imperative to understand and proactively consider issues underlying citizen adoptionof eGovernmentinitiativesin that context. This study aimed at identifying issues underlying adoption of eGovernmentinitiatives in Tanzania, a typical developing country. The results areimportant fordesigning, deploying, and evaluatingof the initiativesin the country. In this paper, we present research results concerning issues influencingadoption of eGovernmentinitiatives by citizens in Tanzania. Using the case study approach as our strategy, we investigated the adoption of three government organisations. We found that the adoption of eGovernmentinitiatives in Tanzania is determined by (1) perceived organisational preparedness (2) citizen preparedness (3) service intrinsic issues, (4) access limitations, and (5) organisational context. We perceivethat it is possible to achieve higherdegreeof citizen adoption of eGovernmentinitiatives in Tanzania. However, the government need appropriate strategies toovercome challenges posed by the issues identified in this study.