Tag Archives: Africa

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Lola Adekanye

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, my collaborators Nils Köbis and Christopher Starke interview Lola Adekanye, a Nigerian-American lawyer who currently leads the Business Integrity and Anti-Corruption Programs in Africa at the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE).

After discussing her own background and how she began working on anticorruption issues, Ms. Adekanye describes the work that CIPE does at the intersection of the private and public sector, including the advocacy of market-oriented reforms to drive up the cost of corruption and drive down the cost of compliance. More concretely, she describes some concrete anticorruption initiatives that CIPE has worked on, including the Ethics First initiative in Africa, which seeks to make due diligence screening and verification in Africa more feasible and effective. CIPE’s guidance to companies as to how to deal with bribery by firm employees emphasizes what Ms. Adekanye calls the the “three Rs”: (1) Giving firm employees clear and realistic instructions on how they should RESPOND to requests for bribes; (2) Ensuring that the compliance department RECORDs the bribe request and reports it to a higher level; and (3) REPORTING bribe requests to governments and business organizations, to provide a clearer picture of how bribery is distorting markets, lowering government revenue, and undermining government projects.

You can find the episode here. You can also find this episode and an archive of prior episodes at the following locations:

KickBack is a collaborative effort between GAB and the ICRN. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends! And if you have suggestions for voices you’d like to hear on the podcast, just send me a message and let me know.

Combating Money Laundering in Africa: John Hatchard’s Latest Guide for African Corruption Fighters

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The war on corruption is being fought on many fronts. One where victory is especially critical is the battle to prevent leaders of poor countries from robbing their citizens blind, and nowhere will a victory be more welcome or more hard-fought than in Africa.   Seventy percent of the world’s poor live on the continent while, thanks first to colonialism and then to Cold War machinations, Africans are saddled with governments ill-equipped to keep greedy leaders in check.  Courts, legislatures, and other accountability institutions are weak; the media and civil society hobbled by repressive, non-democratic measures.

Not that in recent years there have not been promising developments. South Africa’s once powerful leader Jacob Zuma was forced to resign the presidency over corruption allegations for which he is now on trial.  Former Guinea Minister of Mines Mahmoud Thiam forfeited $8.5 million and was sentenced to seven years in prison for corruptly granting virtually the whole of his nation’s mineral sector to a Chinese conglomerate.  The son of former Mozambique President Armando Guebuza is one of over a dozen members of the country’s ruling circle facing trial for his role in the “hidden debt” scandal.

What will be required to continue this progress is the theme of John Hatchard’s latest book,  Combating Money Laundering in Africa: Dealing with the Problem of PEPs. Like his earlier ones on African anticorruption laws and institutions (here, here, and here), it’s a must have for African corruption fighters.

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Guest Post: Toward a Meaningful “Common African Position on Asset Recovery”

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GAB is delighted to welcome back Mat Tromme, Director of the Sustainable Development & Rule of Law Programme at the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, who contributes the following guest post:

It’s no secret that kleptocratic rulers in Africa have robbed their countries of substantial assets that could have  otherwise been used to promote development and social welfare. Indeed, the amounts are often staggering: $16 billion reportedly stolen by former Libyan President Gaddafi; $1 billion by Gambia’s ex-President Jammeh; billions by former Congolese President Kabila; and the list goes on. Recently, Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crime Commission suggested that up to $50 billion has been looted from Africa, and whether or not particular estimate is accurate, there’s little doubt the problem is serious. More troubling is the fact that only a small proportion of these stolen assets have been recovered and repatriated to the country of origin.

As part of the effort to address the challenges of asset recovery—and to give African states more clout in negotiating the terms and conditions of asset return with the states that initially seize the stolen loot—African countries are currently undertaking an effort to develop a “Common African Position on Asset Recovery” (CAPAR). Incidentally, a common african position was the chosen theme of this year’s African Union Anti-corruption day. At this early stage, it seems likely that this effort will result only in a political proclamation (perhaps within the framework of this month’s UN General Assembly), one that will re-emphasize the importance of the speedy and unconditional return of assets, and call for better collaboration across countries. That’s a good start, but not enough! Developing a pan-African position on asset recovery—perhaps similar to the multilateral framework adopted by the Mercosur countries and by the EU—is a worthwhile endeavor, one that will likely produce tangible benefits only if it goes beyond mere statements of intent or general principles, and lays out some concrete steps to translate the vision into reality.

Ideally, CAPAR should seek to streamline policies and resources devoted to recovering assets and developing better investigative and prosecutorial capacity across African states, for example by implementing cross-border investigations and fostering collaboration, experience and information-sharing between countries. There are various ways to achieve this broad objective: Continue reading →

Fighting Police Corruption in Nigeria: An Agenda for Comprehensive Reform

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Nigeria has a serious problem with police corruption, at all levels. At the top, senior police officials embezzle staggering sums of public funds. To take just one example, in 2012, the former Inspector General of Police, Sunday Ehindero, faced trial for embezzling 16 million Naira (approximately US$44,422). Meanwhile, at the lower levels, rank-and-file police officers regularly extort money from the public, and crime victims must pay bribes before the police will handle their cases. As a 102-page report by Human Rights Watch documented, police extortion is so institutionalized that Nigerians are more likely to encounter police demanding bribes than enforcing the law. No wonder Nigeria’s police force was ranked as the worst of those included in the 2016 World Internal Security and Police Index, and that Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer survey found that a staggering 69% of Nigerian citizens think that most or all police officers are corrupt.

To combat such a deep-rooted and systemic problem, bold and comprehensive reforms are needed. What would an effective reform agenda look like? Here is an outline of the most important reforms that are needed, drawing on international best practices but also tailored to Nigeria’s particular circumstances: Continue reading →

Leveraging Blockchain to Combat Procurement Corruption

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Procurement corruption–including things like bid rigging, shadow vendors, and the steering of public contracts to politically connected firms—is an enormous worldwide problem, costing taxpayers up to $2 trillion annually. New technologies, though certainly no panacea, may offer new techniques for combating this sort of corruption. One such technology is blockchain.

Blockchain, most famous as the foundational technology for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, is a “distributed ledger technology” (DLT)—a tamper-proof record of activities that are time-stamped and verified by a distributed network of computers. DLT creates a trail of information which allows for the full traceability of every transaction and stores a chronological list of transactions in an encrypted ledger. Transactions are bundled into a secure and identifiable block and then added to a corresponding chain. The blockchain is maintained and verified by the distributed crowd, eliminating the need for hierarchy and any centralized authority or middleman. And while blockchain is best known for its role in making cryptocurrencies feasible, it also has a range of other applications, including anticorruption applications. For example, Tanzania has utilized the technology to weed out “ghost workers” from the public sector, ending the monthly outflow of 430 billion Tanzanian shillings (approximately US$195.4 million) in salaries to fake employees who exist only on paper. Nigeria’s customs service has also used blockchain technology to store information on financial transactions and share these transactions across multiple computer networks.

Blockchain technology could also be used to combat common forms of procurement corruption, particularly those that involve after-the-fact tampering with submitted bids and supporting documentation. Such a system would work as follows: Continue reading →

Do Chinese Aid Projects in Africa Make Corruption Worse? And If So, Why?

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Development aid is a potentially powerful tool for promoting economic growth among the world’s poor. However, development aid is plagued by corruption, in no small part because many of the poorest areas are also the most susceptible to corruption. In addition to that dilemma, some research suggests that the injection of outside funds into existing corrupt societies can actually exacerbate governance problems. Is this true? And does the impact of development aid on corruption (and development) depend on the source of the aid? An important new paper by Ann-Sofie Isaksson and Andreas Kotsadam suggests that the answers are yes and yes—in particular, they find that Chinese aid projects in Africa may worsen local corruption.

To investigate the question whether Chinese aid projects affect local corruption in Africa, the authors combine data from separate sources. For data on local corruption, the authors make use of the Afrobarometer surveys, with data on nearly 100,000 respondents in 29 countries, collected over a 12 year period (2000-2012) in four separate surveys. The authors focus in particular on respondents’ answer to questions about the frequency of paying bribes to avoid problems with the police or to obtain documents or permits. The authors use the geographic location of survey respondents, together with information on the geographic location of 227 Chinese-aid-supported projects in Africa, in order to identify those respondents who live geographically close to a project supported by Chinese development aid. The results are stark: African citizens who live in areas with Chinese-sponsored projects are 4 percentage points more likely to pay a bribe to police, and 2 percentage points more likely to pay a bribe for permits or documents. Given baseline reported bribery rates of about 13-14%, this means that citizens living near a Chinese aid project are about 30% more likely to report paying a bribe to the police, and about 15% more likely to report paying a bribe for a permit or document.

The most natural explanation is that Chinese aid projects tend to stimulate more corruption. There are, of course, a number of other possible explanations, which the authors address and for the most part rule out, or at least suggest are unlikely:

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Tanzania’s President Magufuli Bulldozes the Civil Service: Is This an Anticorruption Breakthrough?

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For decades (perhaps longer), the corruption problem in Sub-Saharan Africa has seemed intractable. With only a handful of exceptions (such as Botswana, and more recently Rwanda), Sub-Saharan African countries score poorly on measures like Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI), and direct surveys of African citizens tend to confirm that the frequency of petty bribery, while both lower and more variable than some Westerners think, are much higher than in most other countries. Declarations of war on corruption have also been a feature of African politics for decades, to the point where both citizens themselves and outside observers have grown cynical about the will or capacity of leaders to clean up the system.

But there are some preliminary, hopeful signs that in at least some major Sub-Saharan countries, things may be starting to change for the better. The country that probably gets the most attention, at least among commentators outside of Africa, seems to be Nigeria, where President Buhari—a former strongman-style President whom some have characterized as a kind of “born-again” reformer—has made anticorruption a centerpiece of both his election campaign and his administration. (For some discussions of President Buhari’s anticorruption efforts, on this blog and elsewhere, see here, here, here, and here.) But to me—as a non-expert with only the most superficial knowledge of the region or its politics—the more interesting developments are actually occurring in Tanzania, under the administration of President John Magufuli. Continue reading →

What Does China’s Anticorruption Campaign Mean for Africa?

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In advance of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s attendance at a China-Africa summit in Johannesburg last December, a flurry of news articles in African outlets—especially in Zimbabwe—optimistically highlighted the role China could play in helping African countries curb corruption. As previously discussed on the blog, in the first three years of his tenure, President Xi has made a crusade against corruption an important rhetorical part of his presidency, and backed up those words with actions (though some have questioned his techniques). It’s equally well-established that China has become very involved with Africa.  China increasingly depends on Africa’s mineral resources to feed China’s growing industries, and Chinese businesses see Africa as a potentially lucrative export market. Many African countries seeks partners, like China, that are willing to invest in infrastructure and business development. Though there has been recent pushback to China’s actions, and even a decline in Chinese investment in Africa, President Xi’s $60 billion pledge at the summit indicates China will continue to be an important player in the region for the foreseeable future.

Many commentators hope that the combination of these two factors—China’s anticorruption campaign and its substantial economic engagement with Africa—will give a boost to anticorruption efforts in Africa. Alas, those hopes are overstated.

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Guest Post: Time to Go Beyond Anti-Corruption Agencies in Sub-Saharan Africa

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Njoya Tikum, United Nations Development Programme Regional Anti-Corruption Advisor for Africa and Yale University World Fellow, contributes the following guest post:

To achieve the aspiration for an inclusive and sustainable human development in Africa, as articulated in the Africa Union’s (AU) Agenda 2063 and reiterated in the Common Africa position on post 2015, African countries must reconsider their approach to the fight against corruption. In the last 15 years, the international community of anticorruption practitioners and advocates have induced African countries to establish anticorruption laws and bodies. With few exceptions, almost every African country—sometimes of their own volition and at times under immense pressure from international financial institutions—has embarked on wide-ranging reforms aimed at strengthening state accountability and eradicating corruption. However, these interventions have not resulted in any noticeable decline in corruption in most parts of Africa. Indeed, multiple indexes such as Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI), the Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s Governance in Africa Report, and the Afrobarometer, indicate that corruption has been on the steady rise in Africa. The critical question, then, is why the legion of interventions aimed at combating corruption have not yielded positive outcomes.

With monumental trust deficit between the state and citizens in Africa, relying on Anti-Corruption Agencies (ACAs) to fight corruption can only yield limited results. For many countries, the establishment of an ACA was just another box to tick in order to get the next round of development assistance; the agencies themselves are mere window dressing, often suffering from institutional weaknesses and a lack of sufficient human and material resources. In several African countries, for example, ACA funding is tied to presidential benevolence instead of allocation through a transparent national budgetary processes. They are staffed by people with no technical expertise, sometimes including retired public servants who have no real zeal to rock the boat. In these countries, the modus operandi is to fight corruption in areas earmarked by the ruling political regime. In some countries, leaders have used the ACAs to further witch-hunts against political opponents.

How does Africa navigate itself out of this quagmire? To win the battle against corruption, Africa must move beyond offices and notepads to pragmatism and action, exploring new and innovative solutions:

  • To begin with, anticorruption strategies must be comprehensive, and must include governance innovations such as open data, transparency and accountability in business, procurement, construction, etc. As part of this comprehensive approach, resources from the national budget must directly be allocated for anticorruption capacity building as part of national development plans (NDPs). As with other parts of NDPs, annual and biannual benchmarks and targets must be established to track the progress of anticorruption initiatives.
  • In addition, African governments can and should make use of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) and citizen social accountability tools. For instance, a number of web based applications have been developed to report instances of corruption in real time, providing an opportunity for cheap, affordable solutions to citizens and quick responses/actions by anti-corruption agencies and integrity institutions. See, for example, the Huduma, Ushahidi in Kenya and Frontline SMS campaigns on drug stock outs in the region.
  • Civil society organisations (CSOs) must play an increased role as the true watchdogs of the people. Given these responsibilities, and the need for CSOs to be autonomous and sensitive to local needs, it is unfortunate that almost 90% of anticorruption CSOs in Sub-Saharan Africa are funded by international donor agencies. The funding strategy must be adjusted, with national governments and other non-state actors taking up more responsibility for supporting anticorruption CSO activities.
  • Speaking of the international community, development partners must switch from playing a hypocritical role where they condemn corruption in the public sector in Africa but do little to stop corruption by private sector groups from their countries. They must embrace a new form of partnership where the private sector, including banks and transnational companies, are held to the same standards as public institutions.

Coordination by Legislation: Is Regional Anticorruption Legislation in the East African Community a Good Idea?

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This past September, at a meeting of the East African Association of Anti-Corruption Authorities, Daniel Fred Kidega, the Speaker of the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) announced that the regional legislature planned to consider a series of anticorruption and whistleblower bills (also reported here). (The EALA is the legislative body of the East African Community, a treaty organization to which Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda are members.) According to the Speaker’s remarks, “[t]he Laws passed by EALA supercede those of the Partner States on matters within the purview of the Community.”

Details on the legislation are scant, and movement on this proposal does not seem imminent. (Drafts of the proposed legislation are not available on the EALA website, nor could I find them through other sources. And at the mid-October EALA session, anticorruption does not appear to have been on the agenda.) Furthermore, the EAC Treaty does not provide the EALA all of the legislative power the Speaker’s statements suggest, because, according to Article 63 of the EAC Treaty, acts of the EALA only become effective law for member states if each of the five Heads of State “assents” to the measure. Nonetheless, given the interest in East Africa and elsewhere in greater international cooperation on anticorruption efforts, it’s worth reflecting on whether regional anticorruption legislation such as that proposed by Speaker Kidega is a good idea.

I tend to think not. While regional coordination, particularly through conventions, can be an effective way to strengthen anticorruption efforts (as Rick previously discussed in a comment on this post), it is not a good idea in every circumstance (as Matthew noted in a recent post in the context of proposals for a ASEAN Integrity Community). Although the EAC might be able to perform a helpful goal-setting and coordinating role (something akin to an UNCAC or African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption), the proposal for the EALA to enact more binding regional anticorruption legislation involves more risks than benefits.

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