Vessah Mbouombouo, Salim Ahmed

Shadow Economy in Africa: Is E-Government an Answer? - 2025.


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The purpose of this article is to analyse the effect of e-government on the shadow economy in 47 African countries over the period 2002–2017. To do so, we combine different identification strategies (OLS, FE, RE, System GMM and quantile regression) and obtain the following results. First, the findings suggest that e-government significantly reduces the shadow economy in Africa. This finding is robust to the addition of other control variables, to the use of alternative measures of e-governance and informality, to the use of alternative samples and to the use of five and 10-year lags of e-government. Secondly, the quantile regression results show that the effect of e-government on informality is a function of the size of the informal sector. This effect can be transmitted through a reduction of corruption and proliferation of information and communication technologies (ICTs). JEL Codes: L86, E26, O17, O55