Article Preview
Top1. Introduction
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are now at the centre of public and business organisations. ICTs are integrated into operations of economic sectors including health, education, agriculture and financial services (Tchamyou, Erreygers, & Cassimon, 2019). Further, people in their communities are using ICTs to support their day to day activities. There is a growing consensus among scholars and practitioners on the perceptions that ICTs can support improve the socio-economic development of low-income status economies and redress inequality in communities (Avgerou, 2003; Mansell, 2010; Walsham & Sahay, 2006). Governments, international development agencies and financial lending organisations believe that ICTs can stimulate economic growth of low-income status countries to bypass some of the stages of development and reach the economic status of developed countries (Mansell, 2011; Tan, Ng & Jiang, 2018). Nonetheless, the concept of development in relation to ICTs has been widely contested among scholars (see Brown & Grant, 2010; Thapa & Saebo, 2014; Zheng & Stahl, 2012).
There are many factors that can affect a country to achieve socio-economic development and transformation. Some of the inhibiting factors of socio-economic development are political instability, poor governance, corruption, inadequate financial and material resources and limited economic growth (Brooks & Loftus, 2016; Cammack, 2012). These factors can lead to economic crisis and hardship. Countries under hardships are also focusing on ICTs to support addressing their socio-economic challenges. Conversantly, ICTs have been incorporated in economic recovery plans of countries facing economic crisis. For instance, studies conducted in Cuba (Urra, 2008), Korea (Kim, 2009), the European Union (EU) (Braga, 2009), United States of America (USA) (LaRose, Bauer, DeMaagd, Chew, Ma & Jung, 2014) and Zimbabwe (Nyemba & Chigona, 2012) have highlighted integration of ICTs in economic recovery plans. To the knowledge of the author, there is substantial literature on the role of ICT in economic recovery plans but there are few studies conducted in the context of Africa. This study aims to contribute to the literature on this knowledge gap.
The argument adopted in this paper is that while ICTs may be perceived to be antidote to economic challenges and promote socio-economic growth, ICTs are not neutral and may have unintended consequences in government, business organisations and communities e.g. unemployment, pollution, illiteracy, corruption, crimes, addiction and financial exploitation (Majchrzak, Markus & Wareham, 2014; Tarafdar, Gupta, & Turel, 2013). The integration of ICTs in economic recovery plans can lead to decisions, processes and programs that can affect government, business organisations and citizens. The economic recovery plans have inherent values and interests of the different stakeholders who view ICTs differently (Sein & Harindranath, 2004; Sein, Thapa, Hatakka & Saebo, 2018). Hence, there is a need to critique statements in the economic recovery plans and bring to light the hidden assumptions and taken for granted issues related to socio-economic development (Thompson, 2004; Walsham & Sahay, 2006). The focus of this paper is to critique the role of ICTs in supporting the economic recovery of a country facing socio-economic challenges. The study was guided by the research questions: How does ICTs support economic recovery strategies to achieve socio-economic development? What are the assumptions and taken for granted issues of ICTs in the economic recovery plan?