The Extent to Which E-Democracy Facilitates Citizen Participation in Burundi

Abstract

This paper focuses on examining the extent to which e-democracy facilitates citizen participation in Burundi. This study was guided by the citizen involvement theory and employed a qualitative approach. Using qualitative data derived from the target population, it was observed that it is true that e-democracy facilitates citizen participation. However, there are some limitations that were identified. For instance, in the Burundian government, despite the citizen participation in the online platforms and media, the country lacks freedom of expression and therefore most of the citizens do not provide genuine feedback. Moreover, even those that provide feedback to the government, their opinion is usually not considered during the decision-making process. Furthermore, it was observed that most of the ICT platforms in Burundi are used for disseminating information and not involving the citizens. This paper therefore concluded that the Burundian government requires to improve the way it uses ICTs to facilitate effective citizen participation through e-democracy as a result of various factors such as to guaranteed freedom of expression and consider online citizen contributions.