This study shows that a message informing about the availability of electronic government services can reduce the perception that citizens are treated unequally and foster the feeling that the government cares about the people’s needs. For many citizens in countries of the Global South, the relationship with the state is rather vague and not characterised by high levels of interaction. Traditional gatekeepers mediate between government and citizens, inhibiting direct state-citizen contact. Digital tools reduce the cost to engage directly with citizens. Such e-government services are heralded as a silver bullet for weak government institutions willing to reach out and engage more heavily with disenfranchised citizens. This proposition receives support from a randomised controlled trial conducted in cooperation with the tax administration of Botswana. In February 2020, we sent a short message to the mobile phones of a random subset of registered taxpayers and traced their reactions with an original survey of 2,000 inhabitants of Gaborone on the use of e-services and political attitudes. Our results indicate that being informed about e-services positively affects perceptions of equality and being catered for by the government. The findings improve our understanding of how digital tools can be used and misused in the quest for tackling various types of socio-economic inequality.