TITLE:
Economic Impact and Ethical Challenge of New Information and Communication Technologies in the Democratic Republic of Congo
AUTHORS:
Christophe Lwanyi Ashimalu, Jean Claude Bukasa Mukengeshayi
KEYWORDS:
Transparency, Traceability, Archiving, Ethics, Digital Natives and [Im]Migrants, Greater South
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.11 No.4,
April
30,
2024
ABSTRACT: In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) over the last few decades, digital work environments have gradually been set up to enable the various players in social life to work together, access resources, engage in distance learning, archive and trace data, and so on. These environments are set to become increasingly important in the daily lives of citizens, in order to maximize revenue while minimizing expenditure. To boost the DRC’s development, the management of the Res Publica must meet the criteria of transparency, traceability and archiving. Our aim, therefore, is not to present a model of sustainable development based on the use of IT tools to combat the systemic and personal economic crimes that have mortgaged the future of the Congolese people, but rather to stigmatize the ethics involved in the use of this modern tool, and to determine the extent to which the integration of these new technologies into the economies of the South can influence ethics. However, in the use of these tools, we need to distinguish between two categories of users: native users and digital [im]migrants. Using survey, interview, documentary and reading techniques, we are going to show how the transparency of actions, the traceability of operations and their archiving constitute the milestones of sustainable development for the Democratic Republic of Congo. To achieve this, a great deal of work needs to be done upstream: boosting the citizen’s mindset, making the IT infrastructure available, and training citizens in the use of this IT tool.