LEWISTON – The road to democratization in the nations of East and Southern Africa has been rough and rocky, but efforts including information management reform are pointing the way to better progress.

That was the conclusion of a senior lecturer from the University of Botswana who spoke at Lewiston-Auburn College on Thursday night.

Justus Wamukoya, who is a scholar and practitioner in the field of records and archives management, said effective information management coupled with public sector reform “empowers people to hold government to account.”

He said records are extremely crucial in daily life. Government inefficiency has a serious impact on individuals, he said, adding that he has seen cases where lack of proper information management meant people who had applied for pensions never got them before they died years later.

“In my part of the world,” he said, “the public sector still has a lot to do in people’s lives.” Change is taking place, he said, as the public sector “is reinventing itself” in several African countries.

“My real heroes are the small NGOs (non-governmental organizations),” Wamukoya told the audience. Too often, larger organizations come in with money and grandiose plans, but accomplish little, he said.

Privatization of businesses once under public control also has been taking place, but Wamukoya said this needs to be done with more local participation rather than selling off businesses “at throw-away prices” to international concerns.

Another major challenge facing African nations is the need to make reform “a deliberate policy and action,” he said. Although people of East and Southern Africa are becoming emboldened to speak up, there is still deeply entrenched government inefficiency and outright corruption, Wamukoya declared.

He also pointed out that wide areas of African nations have little or no technological infrastructure. In some cases, there is one telephone for 100 people. The people have few skills in a digital world.

He called human resources the most valuable component in the mix that is needed to bring about public sector reform, and that requires “a vibrant civil society movement.”

Noting that western models of democratization have been tried, Wamukoya said, “We are still looking for a leadership model.”

Maybe that means “going back to our indigenous knowledge systems,” he suggested.

In a brief discussion of how several African nations have dealt with various systems of government – some for better, some for worse – Wamukoya raised the possibility of a federation of nations, but stated, “maybe we are not yet ready for that.”

There have always been difficulties in cross-boundary relationships between African nations, he said.

Among the African countries in the regions his lecture covered are Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Somalia, Ethiopia and the Sudan in the east and South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe in the south.

Wamukoya addressed an audience of about two dozen people representing a wide range of ages and ethnicity. His talk included highlights from lectures he has delivered at the University of Southern Maine’s L-A College while in residency there this past week.

The lecture, titled “Public Sector Information Management in East and Southern Africa: Implications for Democracy and Governance,” was sponsored by the University of Southern Maine Provost Office, World Affairs Council of Maine, International Students of Lewiston/Auburn, Lewiston-Auburn College Amnesty International and the Great Falls Forum.