From left: Director of the African Centre of
Excellence for Information Ethics, Mr Coetzee
Bester; Professor Cheryl de la Rey; and Professor
Stephen Mutula.

Academic Leader for the Development Cluster in the School of Social Sciences, Professor Stephen Mutula, recently received the Capurro Fiek Foundation for Information Ethics (CFFIE) Award for his distinguished and exemplary scholarly contribution to the development of information ethics in Africa.

Sponsored by the CFFIE, formerly the European Centre of Information Ethics (ECIE) in Germany, Mutula was recognised by a team of scholars in Africa, Europe and North America who are instrumental in creating awareness about informational ethics in Africa.

The award was presented to Mutula by the Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Pretoria, Professor Cheryl de la Rey, at the third Africa Conference for Information Ethics, held in Pretoria. Mutula received a monetary reward, a trophy and a certificate of excellence.

Mutula is proud of his award as it shows his commitment to promoting the responsible – moral and ethical – use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the information society in Africa.

‘This is very important to me because the increased use of new ICTs such as social media in education has ethical ramifications that must be addressed now rather than later to leverage its impact in collaborative learning and research,’ said Mutula.

Mutula joined UKZN in September 2011 from the University of Botswana and is a prolific scholar and author. Among his publications are three books: Digital Economies, SMEs and E-readiness; Web-based Information Management: A Cross Disciplinary Approach; and Information and Knowledge Management in the Digital Age: Concepts, Technologies and African Perspectives.

Mutula has previously won several international awards from Emerald (one of the world’s leading scholarly publishers of journals and books in business and management) for his outstanding contribution to scholarly research and publications in the areas of information society, information poverty, e-government, financing of university education, digital libraries and e-readiness. In addition, he serves on more than a dozen international editorial boards of reputable scholarly journals.

According to Mutula, his recent award gives him ‘added impetus to strive and advocate for integration of information ethics in the curricula at university and school level, as well as encourage postgraduate research in the area’.