ICT: The Best Tool to Fight Corruption in Developing Countries
John Chrysostom A. Nsambu, MP, Minister of State for ICT, Uganda
Abstract: A study made in East Africa indicated that four major areas of governance were discovered to be the most important sectors of all citizens yet found to be vulnerable to corruption because of lack of ICT applications: 1) Immigration Departments; 2) Land registration department; 3) Departments of health; and 4) Electoral Commissions.
Beginning with Immigration Departments, it is proven that application of ICTs would generate not only transparency but also help catch the corrupt and bring them before the law. In Uganda, for example, people who are desperate to have their passports issued on time end up having to give immigration officers moneys under the table and have their files worked on. This is possible because everything is done manually without any tracking system in place which the citizens themselves would use to know the status of their application via the internet. Likewise, foreigners in East Africa end up having to corrupt the officers so that they can have their work permits issued even to people who would not qualify. These and other practices seriously undermine the progress and development of any country.
Land registration departments are also another area that needs to be digitalized using modern technologies. Very often, people corrupt officers in the land registration boards and get multiple Land Titles. Very often, the corrupt officers sell that land to different buyers who show up with similar titles which scenarios often end up in courts, a process that slows down any development activities that were supposed to be done on the land in dispute.
It is also a proven fact that millions of people in Africa are dying of diseases that would becurable had the drugs/medicines not gotten stolen by National Drug Authorities or local governments. If the central governments had a very well coordinated ICT infrastructure to track which type and amount of drugs that go to hospital X it would be very difficult to lose many drugs and worse still give expired drugs to citizens. It is true that many officers, because of lack of ICT applications, divert crucial drugs to their own clinics and leave hospitals and dispensaries empty.
Taking an example of Kenya, where elections turned violent and caused the loss of over 1,000 people, it is very evident that there was lack of transparency in the counting of the votes and therefore lack of ICT applications in tallying of the votes. Similar examples of election violence were and continue to be experienced in Zimbabwe. Electoral disputes run across the continents of Africa and Asia only in nations where there is no strong ICT application ICT in this sector and this calls for all countries in the same wagon to borrow an example nations like Germany.
