Building Blocks for Ubuntu Information Systems Ethics

Although there has been interest in the ethical aspects of information systems (IS) since the 1980s, various authors have recently lamented the fact that not enough research has been done in the area and that ethics is often ignored in the IS industry. When one searches for research on the decolonisation and Africanisation of IS ethics, few outputs can be found. The main research question that this article addresses is: How can African knowledge systems and ways of knowing inform and enrich IS ethics? The main aim of the article is to identify appropriate ethical insights borrowed from Ubuntu-informed ethics, information ethics and business ethics to serve as building blocks for Ubuntu IS ethics. The article is a conceptual study that follows a philosophical approach. The research is a rudimentary attempt to enrich IS ethical theory from an African-Ubuntu viewpoint. The salient contribution is the proposal of foundations for an Ubuntu-based IS ethics, which could be used to counteract the hegemony of Eurocentric values embedded in information and communication technology.