ABSTRACT
Except for South Africa, most African countries enacted archival legislation shortly after their independence, often modelled after United Kingdom’s Public Record Act of 1958 or former colonial masters, such as Portugal in Mozambique and Angola. With the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced millions of people worldwide to work from remote locations using technology, organizations experienced challenges in providing employees with access to authentic and legally admissible records to support their functions. Such challenges include organizations’ inability to maintain authenticity of digital records because, unlike physical records, they are easily corrupted, resulting in digital records losing their trustworthiness credence. Digital records infrastructure provides foundational tools and services that are required to unlock acceptable records management practices of records held in digital spaces and electronic environments. From the audit perspective, the value of auditing is in its ability to provide an independent assurance of usefulness and reliability of accounting information, which promotes efficient, economic, and effective use of public resources.
