In order to understand ICT governance and e-government sustainability in SADC, the research questions are:

The main goal of the systematic literature review (SLR) is to synthesise how SADC countries have implemented their ICT governance initiatives and the impact on e-government deployment in terms of financial and technical sustainability. The review takes a historical context assessment, assessing early development to the current trends in SADC countries. Despite the importance of ICT governance models, there is limited research on their role in sustaining e-government initiatives in Africa. This SLR addresses that gap by examining the nexus between ICT governance and e-government initiatives’ sustainability in SADC, focusing on practices, state of e-government initiatives and critical success factors.

Africa has recognised the importance of e-government, and countries are creating digital platforms and launching online services to engage citizens. (Expert Group Meeting 2020). The challenge remains in the sustainability of these initiatives, with many problems like inadequate infrastructure, limited capacity and a lack of leadership commitment being faced (AFDB 2018).

The purpose of ICT governance is the alignment of e-government solutions with the government’s overall business goals and objectives, and to help with the effective management of resources to ensure sustainability (Weill & Ross 2004). Governance frameworks are useful mechanisms for understanding the administrative and operational structures in the management of ICT use. Factors important for sustaining e-government initiatives include leadership commitment, stakeholder engagement and capacity-building, according to various studies.

As investments in digital infrastructure across the African continent increase, so does the need for modern ICT governance. Globally, ICT governance has been integrated into broader governance frameworks, and Africa must adopt the same principles. The SLR provides an overview of ICT governance and e-government in SADC, focusing on key themes, challenges and opportunities.

Information and Communication Technology governance is a process-based mechanism for managing IT operations’ alignment with business goals and objectives, mitigating against risks related to IT use, ensuring compliance and maximising value from IT. It is a strategic use of technology by providing structures, accountability and transparency mechanisms. Challenges such as complexity, critical skills shortages and regulatory gaps arise when implementing the frameworks in low-resourced areas. There are challenges with IS resources and a technical-skilled staff shortage for interpreting and implementing these technical frameworks (Amorim et al. 2021; Antariksa, Angin & Widodo 2025). The South African context is complicated by the presence of board members who lack the fundamental knowledge to ask critical questions about ICT governance (Maseko & Marx 2016). This leads to the treatment of IT as a separate value-providing asset rather than a strategic arm of the organisation, leading to inadequate oversight and complete delegation to Chief Information Officers (CIOs) (Maseko & Marx 2016; Raghupathi 2007). IT is often viewed as a support process and not a value creator, leading to implementation efforts being hampered by small budgets that are open to intense scrutiny and may suffer cuts in financially troubled times (Mubarak & Fianty 2023; Toaza, Montenegro & Salazar 2022) and employees accustomed to existing workflows often resist implementation (Amorim et al. 2021; Ilori, Nwosu & Naiho 2024). Modern governance frameworks like Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies (COBIT) are highly complex, making it difficult for low-resource contexts lacking expertise to implement them. Their implementation requires stable infrastructure and consistent funding, both of which are often lacking, creating a gap between policy and practical implementation. Financial fragility, infrastructure deficits and high staff turnover are the common challenges faced by SADC governments.

The COBIT is designed to focus on IT governance, risk and compliance. Serving as a foundational model for many adapted models, such as the South African Corporate Governance of ICT Policy Framework (CGICTPF), but problems of fragmented accountability arise when applied to under-resourced, small municipalities because of its comprehensiveness. Most African governments and local governments have not reached the level of maturity suitable for full implementation of COBIT. An example is COBIT 5, which is too complex and requires more years for full implementation (Amorim et al. 2021; Steuperaert 2017). To implement even a fraction of its large set of processes (35) and dependencies (6000) is a daunting task (Amorim et al. 2021). The more flexible COBIT 2019 still has challenges when adapting it because of the need for time and financial resources needed to map organisational objectives to framework goals (Antariksa et al. 2025; Ishlahuddin et al. 2020).

The ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) focuses on IT service management (ITSM). Information Technology Infrastructure Library emphasises standardising service delivery. It is a governance framework that helps organisations manage IT services effectively. It is recognised globally as best-practice guidance for ITSM in organisations and has been widely accepted as an ITSM framework (Gërvalla, Preniqi & Kopacek 2018). The most popular components of ITIL are service delivery and service support. Information Technology Infrastructure Library service support consists of several sub-processes for handling customer issues and implementing structured infrastructure changes. Information Technology Infrastructure Library service delivery defines sub-processes for maintaining infrastructure at agreed-upon levels (Winniford, Conger & Erickson-Harris 2009). In low-resourced countries like Zambia, still dependent on donor funding, the inflexible processes of ITIL can be difficult to sustain once funding is cut off and expertise withdraws.

The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) focuses on enterprise architecture and digital transformation. The Open Group Architecture Framework is designed for large-scale enterprise integration and is widely accepted as a method for developing enterprise architectures. The Open Group Architecture Framework is an open framework that provides a practical, definitive and proven step-by-step method for developing and maintaining enterprise architectures (Sparx Systems 2006). To avoid the challenges associated with full implementation, some SADC countries, such as Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), have adopted interoperability frameworks and Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs), including eGIF4M, to manage existing legacy systems and heterogeneous environments. Mozambique and the DRC have shifted toward more modular SOA and Interoperability Frameworks (e.g. eGIF4M) instead of full TOGAF implementations.

King III, updated to King IV, is a corporate governance framework that covers leadership and ethics, risk management and compliance, board effectiveness, and accountability. The framework uses a principle-based approach and emphasises technology, ethics and sustainability. On paper, it is a good framework, but difficult to implement because of its vagueness and lack of practical, detailed guidance for implementation (Maseko & Marx 2016).

Collectively, the reviewed governance frameworks reveal a recurring tension between global best-practice and local implementation realities. While COBIT, ITIL and TOGAF provide comprehensive governance structures, their successful implementation depends on institutional capacity, technical maturity and sustained funding. Institutional Theory explains this pattern through coercive and normative pressures that encourage the adoption of internationally recognised frameworks, while Socio-technical Systems Theory (STST) suggests that implementation success depends on alignment between technical requirements and organisational capabilities. Consequently, governance effectiveness in SADC appears to depend less on framework adoption and more on contextual adaptation.

The reviewed studies show that international standards such as COBIT, TOGAF and ITIL are not fully implemented in the SADC countries. Instead, governments selectively adapt components consistent with local institutional capacity, infrastructure maturity and financial constraints. The findings suggest that governance effectiveness depends less on adopting international frameworks but more on contextual adaptation, institutional embedding, and interoperability-based implementation in low-resourced contexts.

Progress has been made in SADC’s e-governance implementation, but challenges remain, including insufficient infrastructure and funding, the digital divide, and cybersecurity threats. With inclusiveness and capacity-building, opportunities abound in governance initiatives, such as service delivery improvement, innovation and collaboration, and transparency. To achieve the best results and sustainability, it requires investment in infrastructure, promotion of inclusivity and concerted efforts from all stakeholders.

This SLR utilises the STST and Institutional Theory. The STST analyses the interactions between the technical infrastructure, social and organisational structures, whereas the Institutional Theory analyses the integration of governance frameworks within government sections. The study goes beyond summarising frameworks and seeks to understand the disconnect between policy design and execution (Chowdhury 2015; Gumede & Tladi 2023; Hassan & Ramon Gil-Garcia 2008).

The STST argues for effort to be put into understanding both technical systems and the people who use them. The major components of the STST are the technical sub-system and the social sub-system. The physical infrastructure, hardware, software, processes and tasks make up the technical sub-system and mainly define efficiency, capacity and flow of operations. The Social Sub-system focuses on social interaction, people’s needs, and job satisfaction. It includes people, their relationships, values, skills and organisational culture. It relies on the ‘Principle of Joint Optimisation’, which hypothesises that if the technical side is optimised while ignoring the social side, the system will fail (Gumede & Tladi 2023).

Sustainability is the long-term feasibility, adoption and persistent use of e-government services. In this context, STST would help unpack the interplay among technology, organisational structures and social context. There is a need to go beyond the challenges of the digital divide, organisational culture and resistance, adaptive governance and stakeholder alignment, and focus on how these factors interact and influence the sustainability of e-government. Ignoring the balance between social and technical systems leads to catastrophic failures (Gumede & Tladi 2023).

The Institutional Theory recognises that three pillars are responsible for constraining and guiding behaviour: regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive. The regulative consists of formal rules, sanctions and laws; the normative defines professional values and expectations; and the cultural-cognitive defines the perception of reality. The fundamental concept of Institutional Theory is isomorphism, which explains how organisations end up adopting the same structure and processes. This is achieved through three ways: coercive, mimetic and normative (Chowdhury 2015; Roszkowska-Menkes 2022).

Institutional Theory helps explain the success or failure of projects in the long run. In the context of e-government sustainability, it helps provide a way to understand systems beyond the technical structure, avoiding the legitimacy trap and the need for stakeholder buy-in. The STST focuses on the match between technology and people (Gumede & Tladi 2023), while the Institutional Theory focuses on environmental pressures. The institutionalisation of e-government solutions will help achieve sustainability, and initiatives must not be carried out for trend’s sake but to fulfil the organisation’s identity. For e-government to be sustainable, it must move from a ‘trendy project’ to an ‘institutionalised’ part of the government’s identity (Roszkowska-Menkes 2022).

In this review, Institutional Theory and Socio-Technical Systems Theory were not used merely as descriptive frameworks but as analytical lenses guiding thematic synthesis. Institutional Theory informed the categorisation of governance arrangements into regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive dimensions, while STST informed analysis of the interaction between technical infrastructure, organisational capability, stakeholder engagement and implementation practices. The dual-theoretical approach allowed for the interpretation of sustainability as an institutional and a socio-technical phenomenon.

The existing SLRs on e-governance and ICT governance highlight the evolution, mechanisms, and challenges in developing countries. They focus on frameworks like COBIT, ITIL and ISO/IEC 38500. There is a lack of reviews focused on ICT governance, e-government and sustainability in the SADC region. Many existing studies focus on initial implementation and fail to examine sustainability over time. There is limited research examining how governance structures influence e-government performance, particularly regarding human, cultural and digital inclusion factors within SADC countries.

The review was done in line with PRISMA 2020 guidelines to ensure methodological transparency and reproducibility. The literature search was performed in IEEE Xplore, Scopus, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, EBSCOhost and Google Scholar from January to February 2026.

The primary Boolean search string was:

(‘ICT governance’ OR ‘IT governance’ OR ‘digital governance’) AND (‘e-government’ OR ‘digital government’ OR ‘e-governance’) AND (‘sustainability’ OR ‘institutionalisation’ OR ‘long-term viability’) AND (‘SADC’ OR ‘Southern African Development Community’ OR ‘Africa’).

Some of the search strings were slightly modified to meet the needs of the database for indexing. The search was restricted to articles written in the English language and published between 2000 and 2025.

Google Scholar was employed as a secondary source to obtain grey literature and regionally indexed studies, which may not be available in indexed databases. As is common in systematic reviews for wide multidisciplinary searches in Google Scholar, the first 200 results by relevance were screened. The search yielded 849 articles. For efficient management and subsequent analysis, the retrieved data were systematically organised in Excel. Results of searches by databases are presented in Table 1.

The scope of filtering is to remove undesirable elements. Duplicates were removed first; this accounted for 111 articles, leaving 738. Title and abstract screening followed based on reviewing the titles and abstracts for keywords like ‘ICT governance’, ‘e-Government’, ‘Sustainability’, ‘Africa’ and ‘Digital governance’. Title and abstract screening were conducted, and articles lacking required keywords or not in line with the study were removed. This process removed 421 articles, retaining 317 articles for consideration. Eligibility assessment followed by applying detailed inclusion/exclusion criteria. Criteria such as publication year, language and study design were applied, resulting in the removal of 250 articles and the retention of 67 publications. The remaining documents underwent full-text screening to assess relevance, methodological soundness and completeness, and 30 documents were retained. The remaining documents were assessed for quality and final inclusion for data extraction.

Studies were included if they:

Studies were excluded if they:

To ensure internal validity, papers were assessed using a 3-point quality scoring system, with a specific focus on methodological rigour and the operational reporting of sustainability outcomes. For criteria and assessment scores, see Table 2.

A paper with an average score of 7 or higher was included, as it highlights the effectiveness of ICT governance and e-government initiatives in SADC. Papers in this category present a clear methodology, include empirical data, discuss the results, include a conclusion, and provide a research agenda or suggest research on a specific area. This review included 28 articles, including journal articles, conference papers and reports. The PRISMA flow diagram is shown in Figure 1.

The unit of analysis comprised scholarly and policy literature related to ICT Governance and e-government sustainability in SADC countries. Data extraction included information on governance frameworks, implementation approaches, sustainability challenges, institutional arrangements, socio-technical factors, funding structures and interoperability mechanisms.

The thematic content analysis approach was used. Initial open coding was used to identify the recurring concepts across studies. Codes were then analysed in a two-step process, first inductively from the literature and second deductively from Institutional Theory and Socio-Technical Systems Theory. The institutional coding categories were: regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive dimensions; and socio-technical coding categories: technical infrastructure, human capability, organisational processes, socio-technical participation and adaptive governance.

Extracted themes were reviewed and compared across studies, which was done iteratively to highlight convergences, contextual differences, tensions and gaps for implementation in order to achieve analytical consistency.

Ethical clearance to conduct this study was obtained from the College of Science, Engineering and Technology, School of Computing ERC (Ref. No. 11483). The study is an SLR of previously published research; it did not involve direct interaction with human participants or the collection of primary data. The researchers have adhered to the PRISMA guidelines to ensure transparency, objectivity and the mitigation of selection bias throughout the review process.

The review also indicated a wider regional transformation of e-government from standalone ICT projects to digital governance ecosystems. Early e-government initiatives in SADC focused primarily on digitising administrative processes and enhancing government efficiency. In time, these developed into citizen-centric service delivery models with a focus on transparency, participation and accountability (Bwalya et al. 2011; Nkwe 2012). This shift is evident in the Botswana experience, where e-government was presented within a wider public-sector reform agenda, which aimed to alleviate bureaucracy, enhance transparency and augment service delivery (Nkwe 2012). Likewise, the ZimConnect initiative in Zimbabwe envisaged e-government as a tool that would enhance government processes, link citizens and facilitate interaction with the outside world. The establishment of a modernisation unit within the Executive Office in Zimbabwe further demonstrated a shift toward centralised strategic oversight of digital transformation initiatives (Hikwa & Maisiri 2016).

The review also highlighted the growing awareness of the need for cross-government integration, institutional culture, cybersecurity, citizen confidence and socio-economic factors to create sustainable e-government. In more recent research, questions of trust, privacy, cybersecurity, citizen adoption and digital inclusion are considered to be fundamental dimensions of sustainability rather than merely technical issues alone (Bwalya et al.2011; Munyoka & Maharaj 2019).

The SLR also demonstrates the need to institutionalise governance processes, and not just view them as technical problems. The region has achieved varying levels of maturity, and three pillars are important for institutionalisation: the regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive pillars.

Using the STST lens, e-government sustainability in SADC is analysed as the interaction between technical and social subsystems.

Achieving joint optimisation requires aligning technical systems with organisational and societal goals such as digital inclusion, accountability, efficiency and citizen participation. Failure to achieve this alignment is evident when highly complex governance models such as COBIT are implemented in under-resourced municipalities, resulting in fragmented accountability and implementation failure (Delport et al. 2016).

Leadership support and stakeholder engagement are consistently identified as critical implementation success factors. In stark contrast to donor-dependent contexts like Zambia, South Africa’s political leadership at the highest level has actively prioritised governance and digital transformation agendas (Farelo & Morris 2006; Mjumo Mzyece 2012). Funding sustainability was also identified as a key concern in studies. In one study, 93% of respondents agreed that adequate funding is critical for sustainability (Apleni & Smuts 2020). Therefore, long-term sustainability is not only about initial project funding, but also institutional funding mechanisms capable of maintaining the project after donor withdrawal (Shvaiko et al. 2009).

Citizen trust and participation have emerged as crucial aspects of sustainable e-government. Research in Zambia and Zimbabwe showed that citizens’ willingness to use e-government services was greatly affected by the perceived level of privacy, trust, security and risk (Munyoka & Maharaj 2019). Insufficient security and privacy lead to distrust and reduce uptake of ICT governance systems.

Stakeholder participation and citizen engagement were also seen as significant sustainability factors. Research highlighted that dominant actors’ interests can exclude grassroots actors and minority citizens, thereby contributing to a lack of community involvement and inclusion in ICT governance processes (Ochara 2012). Botswana’s e-government reforms similarly framed ICT as a mechanism for transparency, accountability and citizen-centred governance (Nkwe 2012). The results indicate that sustainability must be viewed not just in technical or institutional terms, but in the context of public trust, inclusivity, accessibility and social legitimacy.

Identified prerequisites for e-government sustainability include:

The sustainability of e-government helps address corruption and lack of transparency, and resources should be sufficiently provided to e-government and governance projects (Farelo & Morris 2006; Osah & Pade-Khene 2020; Thomas et al. 2009). Implementing the best global practices needs contextualisation to local needs for proper functioning (Joseph et al. 2023). To synthesise these findings, a Conceptual Framework was developed to clarify the interrelationships between governance structures, socio-technical subsystems, institutional culture and sustainability outcomes in SADC e-government systems.

This framework, shown in Figure 2, helps demonstrate the role of institutionalised governance in the interaction of socio-technical subsystems to produce structures that serve as the environment in which sustainable outcomes are achieved.

Institutional Drivers: This construct captures the external environment and its impact on the sustainability of e-government projects. It comprises the Regulative, Normative and Cultural pillars.

Socio-Technical Core: This construct represents the organisational influence on sustainability. It highlights the interaction between the social and technical subsystems, with the institutional entrepreneur leading the transformational processes.

The institutional entrepreneur construct refers to the public-sector actors, reform champions, policy leaders and governance coalitions that drive institutional change and operationalise governance principles. In the literature, there is evidence that leadership capacity and institutionalisation of governance practices across political cycles and donor projects are significant factors in achieving sustainability outcomes.

The framework builds on previous work by incorporating regional socio-technical alignment, interoperability needs, governance maturity, institutional pressures and the desired sustainability outcomes in one analytical framework designed to reflect the SADC context of implementation.

Sustainability Outcomes: This construct provides a summary of expected outcomes. Defines measurable results across three dimensions: financial, technical and institutional sustainability. The goal is to establish concrete funding pathways to shift from donor dependency and establish productive partnerships (Public-Private Partnerships [PPP]) with measurable return on investment (ROI) metrics.

The theoretical pathway from the results, as depicted by the model, shows that Technical Sustainability depends on Institutionalisation. Regulative support through national policies and the social sub-system’s adaptability are critical for the success of robust technical infrastructure (Kumar & Kumar 2025; Manda 2022). The model shows how institutionalised frameworks are a prerequisite for long-term technical and financial viability.

The findings suggest policy and institutional recommendations to strengthen ICT governance and advance sustainable digital transformation.

This study has four significant contributions. Firstly, it offers one of the few SLRs that is exclusively dedicated to ICT governance and e-government sustainability in the SADC region. Secondly, it brings together the Institutional Theory and the Socio-Technical Systems Theory to create a single analytical lens that allows for understanding sustainability in the context of ICT governance in developing countries. Thirdly, it goes beyond description of implementation reporting to uncover the institutional and socio-technical mechanisms influencing sustainability outcomes in various SADC contexts. Lastly, it presents a context-sensitive SADC E-Government Sustainability Model that combines the aspects of governance maturity, interoperability, institutionalisation and sustainability into a single coherent conceptual model for future research and policy development.