Digitalisation has become indispensable in the world today, hence it is not surprising that the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Resident Representative in Ghana, Baba Gana Wakil, is urging member states to consider digitalisation in the socio-political and security landscapes.
For clarity of this editorial, we would take the socio-political landscape to be a combination of social and political issues that relate to the political and social lives of the people.
Examples are matters relating to human rights, economic equality, production, immigration, spread of development projects, ecology, environment, democracy, rule of law and mass media.
Security can be included here but separating it from the other socio-political factors may be for particular attention, which is important.
In a world today full of crimes, issues of security call for particular attention, especially when criminals always attempt to be ahead of the security services.
Digitalisation helps in crime-prevention using such opportunities such as DNA matching; automatic surveillance using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and face recognition; and improved digital exchange and analysis of global crime data.
What is critical is that ECOWAS countries should have the infrastructure that would help their peoples to enjoy the benefits being secured from all manner of crimes.
There should come a time when ECOWAS countries have digital currencies for all the related benefits.
It is on record that Nordic or Scandinavian countries like Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have efficiently digitised their financial infrastructure such that very few people carry cash.
Such a situation can have huge benefits for ECOWAS countries, where there is more money in the hands of the people than at the banks, festers criminal attacks for cash in which criminals even kill in order to take the money from individuals and other sources.
Effective digital currency system can reduce such attacks or even eliminate them and in addition check money laundering, large-scale corruption like kickbacks from companies and tax evasion as well as black market activities.
The police can also have effective tracking systems to trace criminals like mobile money scammers.
Digital identities and signatures can also help prevent forgery and corruption.
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It is being said that one day all manufactured items used by society will be made smart and connected to the internet and can be programmed to be used by particular people so that intruders like thieves can be traced to the location of the item.
This means digitalisation will render stealing a fruitless venture.
With regard to the areas of sociopolitics, digitalisation has started impacting life in the ECOWAS space except that it is not as widespread as elsewhere and also not at the same level among the member states.
But at least, digitalisation is evident to some extent in the states as, for example, all of them use smart phones; adopt digital technologies to do business, hold meetings virtually and hold political campaigns.
Some state institutions like the courts are also automated.
The matter now is that ECOWAS members need strong and widespread digitalisation infrastructure for them to enjoy its full benefits.
And while they think about the benefits of digitalisation, they should not fail to consider its flip side, which includes cybercrime and loss of jobs and how to fix them.
