Graft among African governments could jeopardise efforts to track criminal records digitally via identity systems, according to an expert.
African countries such as Kenya have embarked on digitising population records to help fight crime.
In Kenya, the likes of the Machakos county has announced plans to digitise criminal records, becoming one of the first counties in the country to utilise such technology to fight crime.
But all these gains could be washed away if corruption is still rife in African countries, says Taiye Lambo, who is a security expert that has worked for over 20 years in Europe and America.
Lambo has warned that if corruption is not kept in check in African countries, then the crime digitisation projects could be ineffective.
“The main challenge in Africa is that digitised criminal records can be misused especially when there is so much corruption,” Lambo told ITWeb Africa.
“The manual system leaves for a lot of fraud. If it is computerised, it reduces the likelihood of fraud. If you get people with the right skills they could alter information. So through corruption, information can manipulated,” Lambo said.
He has also advocated for training and equipping of police officers with the technology in fighting crime.
He said that if African countries employed the right people with the right skills, then crime digitisation projects could be successful.
“The integrity of the data should be very high to minimize the chances of the data being manipulated,” Lambo concluded.
Nigeria and South Africa among countries embarking on digitising their identification systems by launching smart ID systems in the coming years.
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