Information Ethics in Africa: - Africa Information Ethics Portal

Ethical Dimensions of the Information Scoiety: Implications for Africaperhaps a need to revert to the fundamentals of ethical theories to help provide a systematicapproach and understanding the debates surrounding WikiLeaks.10. Ethical dimension of Information Society: Implications for AfricaAfrica has unique challenges of an ethical nature in the Information Society. Capurro (2010) observesthat ethics, in general, and Information Ethics in particular, is a young academic field in Africa. Heattributes this to the fact that not much has been published on the role that African philosophy canplay in thinking about the challenges arising from the impact of ICTs on African societies and cultures.Capurro (2008) further points out that because ubuntu principles have underpinned the AfricanRenaissance, Black Economic Empowerment, corporate governance and conflict resolution, similarprinciples or philosophies should be foundational to the African ethical and moral traditions. Thewidely used Eurocentric ethical traditions such as consequentialism, deontology and virtue-basedtheories do not sit well with African traditions. Ocholla (2011) explains that consequentialismemphasises outcomes, while duty-based theories or deontology emphasises rules. Virtue-basedtheories, on the other hand, place emphasis on the character of the personal moral agent. Thedominance and use of Eurocentric ethical traditions in studying African philosophy is being challengedby African scholars who realise that African ethical and moral traditions cannot adequately beinvestigated or studied through an exotic lens.The quest for harnessing Information Ethics tradition in Africa is gathering pace catalysed bythe WSIS Action Line C10. However, the technological revolution brought by mobile communicationand now social media, is taking place in an environment where there is little integration of InformationEthics in the education curriculum (Mutula & Braman, 2011). Conway (n.d.) observes that the field ofscholarship and teaching of Information Ethics is concentrated in developed economies such asGermany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, with Africa lagging behind. The laggardposition of Africa with regard to Information Ethics has caused African scholars to make proactiveattempts to infuse Information Ethics in the education curriculum, especially at the university level.Besides Information Ethics, ethical aspects of e-Government in Africa have been extensivelydiscussed by African scholars and recommendations have been made to national government foraction. The first African Conference on Information Ethics was held in February 2007 in Tshwane,South Africa, to discuss the impact of the use of modern Information and CommunicationTechnologies (ICTs) on the African continent. This was followed by the high-level Workshop on Ethicsand e-Government in February 2009 that was held in Pretoria and addressed, among other subjects,global perspectives of Information Ethics with regard to transparency, secrecy, trust, rights,responsibilities, and accountability. The third Information Ethics forum followed and was held at theUniversity of Botswana in September 2010, resulting in the development of an Information Ethics toolkit for the Information Ethics curriculum. The fourth forum of Information Ethics in Africa was held inSeptember 2011 at the University of Pretoria focusing on generating an Information Ethics curriculumfor undergraduate study at the university (Mutula, 2011). The fifth workshop on Information Ethicsfocusing on social media was held in Nairobi, Kenya, on 3 June 2012. The sixth conference followedon 3 - 7 September 2012 at Kievits Kroon Conference Centre, Pretoria, which further elaborated onthe responsible use of social media in Africa.Despite the current efforts to institutionalise Information Ethics in Africa, there is also a ragingdebate about the prudence of focusing on ‘African Information Ethics’ and/or ‘Information Ethics forAfrica’. Ocholla (2011) poses the question: “Should African Information Ethics be unique”? In contrast,Gordana and Hofkirchner (2011) ask: “Are computing ethics issues unique or are they simply moralissues that happen to involve ICT?” Carbo (n.d.) asserts that each individual belongs to a number ofdifferent cultures at different levels, such as living in one country; speaking different languages; andPage 37