Morocco continues lagging in the United Nations e-Government Survey, published earlier this month (August). In its 2018 edition, the index ranks the Kingdom 110th in the world, stressing at how it failed to keep up with other governments, advancing in the ranking.
In fact, Morocco lost 25 places in the list after it was positioned 85th in the survey’s 2016 edition. Since the start of the UN e-Government report the Kingdom managed to better its performance, moving from 140th in 2008 to 82nd in 2014. However, by 2016, Morocco’s score started deteriorating.
Morocco’s lagging performance can easily be noticed as it is at the bottom of the list that includes other Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. To put it in other words, the Kingdom is 10th in the Arab world’s group, topped by the United Arab Emirates (21st), Bahrain (26th), Kuwait (41st), Qatar (51st), Saudi Arabia (52nd), Oman (63rd), Tunisia (80th), Jordan (98th), and Lebanon (99th).
On the other hand, Morocco is ahead of Egypt (114th), Algeria (130th), Libya (140th) and Mauritania (183rd), ranking second in North Africa behind Tunisia.
Getting into more details, Morocco had a total score of 0.5214 on a scale of 0 to 1 in the e-government. According to the UN survey, the country scored 0.6667 in the Online Service sub-index, 0.77 in the e-Participation index levels, 0.5278 in the Human Capital sub-index and 0.3697 in the Telecom Infrastructure sub-index.
Africa lagging in the UN survey
According to the authors of the report, African countries «overall lag in the e-government compared to the rest of the world». And although some of these nations on the continent have managed to improve their scores in the report’s 2018 edition, the «upward movement has mainly remained from low to middle EGDI-level groups».
«The number of African countries within high-EGDI level group remains at the relatively modest count of six, including Ghana, Mauritius, Morocco, Seychelles, South Africa and Tunisia», added the survey.
Overall, the e-government survey general ranking has been topped by Denmark (1st), Australia (2nd), South Korea (3rd), the UK (4th) and Sweden (5th).
Meanwhile, South Sudan, Niger and Somalia were at the bottom of the Un ranking.