Records Management as an economic asset in Ugandan Higher Education: A systematic conceptual review of cost efficiency, decision-making, and accountability

The institutions of higher learning in Uganda exist within the harsh fiscal limits, but continue to undermine the records management as administration overload and not strategized infrastructure. This methodical conceptual literature review realigns the records management as an economic resource that can produce quantifiable payoffs in the cost-efficiency, sound decision-making, and institutional accountability. After PRISMA 2020, we thematically synthesised 79 sources such as policy documents of Uganda, African archival research, literature on economic theory, and the literature on digital governance to question the basis of theory, empirical findings, and restrictions of implementation. Results indicate that there are three value pathways, which are interrelated (1) the reduction of transaction costs in the form of simplified workflows and compliance assurance; (2) analytics-ready data that facilitates the strategic allocation of resources and performance measurement; and (3) auditable trails that enhance statutory compliance and trust in the stakeholders. All these pathways create a self-perpetrating cycle of institutional resilience when both in line with ISO 15489-1: 2016 and OAIS standards. Nevertheless, there remains a serious disjuncture: where economic theory and international best practice explicitly view records as assets, Ugandan HE practices view them as cost centres, which continues to undervalue investment even in the face of 15-35% efficiency improvements of systematic recordkeeping in similar African settings. Value realisation is moderated by infrastructural shortfalls, digital maturity and fragmentation of governance. The review adds a new theoretical perspective based on transaction cost economics and agency theory, compound-value framework, and policy lever that can be acted upon to transform records management as a marginalised activity into a strategic resource in resource-constrained environments.