corruption in africa essay pdf

How We're Funded
Staff Directory
Board of Directors

Challenging Corruption in Africa: Beyond the Bleak Projections

Nuhu Ribadu is a prosecutor and police officer by training. Until 2007, he served as Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in Nigeria, which he helped establish in 2003. In this essay, he reflects on his experience as the head of the EFCC and the international work needed to challenge corruption in Africa.

From the essay:

Corruption is one of many serious challenges which undermine the effectiveness of institutions and entire governments in many African countries. It seems to be appropriate to hold it responsible for impeding investor confidence and depriving citizens of true governance, democracy, and development. The former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, described it perfectly when he said, “Corruption hurts the poor disproportionately by diverting funds intended for development, undermining a government’s ability to provide basic services, feeding inequality and injustice, and discouraging foreign investment and aid.”

Despite the immense size of the problem, corruption can be defeated. My own experience at the EFCC in Nigeria taught me that change is possible, yet difficult. With the right political atmosphere, we secured an unprecedented number of convictions of those previously regarded as untouchable. Unfortunately, we proved that while it was possible to punish some of the guilty, it was a much larger task to tackle a culture so rich with corruption. Anticorruption offices need help and support from agencies from around the world, particularly the United States. With a strong internal and external base, anticorruption movements have the potential to conquer this cancer on society.

Rights & Permissions

You may use and disseminate CGD’s publications under these conditions.

Sign up to get weekly development updates:

Corruption and Governance in Africa

Swaziland, Kenya, Nigeria

Kempe Ronald Hope, Sr. 0

Development Practice International , Oakville, Canada

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Offers a comprehensive and authoritative account of what we know about corruption in developing countries utilizing a cross-section of case studies from the three most corrupt countries in Anglophone Africa
Draws on the author’s extensive field experience in advising African governments on anti-corruption policy
Explores case studies of corruption in Swaziland, Kenya, and Nigeria

4267 Accesses

31 Citations

1 Altmetric

Table of contents

About this book

Authors and affiliations, about the author, bibliographic information.

Publish with us

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Available as EPUB and PDF
Read on any device
Instant download
Own it forever
Compact, lightweight edition
Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
Free shipping worldwide - see info
Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (5 chapters)

Front matter, corruption in africa: the health sector and policy recommendations for managing the risks.

Kempe Ronald Hope Sr.

Corruption in Swaziland

Corruption in kenya, corruption in nigeria, controlling corruption in africa: a governance approach, back matter.

African Politics
Developing Countries
Anti-Corruption Policy

“The most important contribution of this book is its emphasis on institutions: the latter are very important in the fight against corruption. No anti-corruption project can succeed without effective and fully functioning institutions.” (John Mukum Mbaku, Distinguished Professor of Economics, Weber State University, USA)

“Prof. Hope has produced another significant book on Africa. It’s a must read for all those concerned with, or interested in, corruption and governance issues on the continent.” (Bornwell C. Chikulo, Professor of Development Studies, North-West University, South Africa)

Kempe Ronald Hope, Sr.

Book Title : Corruption and Governance in Africa

Book Subtitle : Swaziland, Kenya, Nigeria

Authors : Kempe Ronald Hope, Sr.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50191-8

Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan Cham

eBook Packages : Political Science and International Studies , Political Science and International Studies (R0)

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-319-50190-1 Published: 03 February 2017

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-319-84340-7 Published: 13 July 2018

eBook ISBN : 978-3-319-50191-8 Published: 25 January 2017

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XXI, 204

Number of Illustrations : 2 illustrations in colour

Topics : African Politics , Public Policy , Comparative Politics , International Organization , Development Studies , Public Administration

Policies and ethics

Find a journal
Track your research

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

We're Hiring!
Help Center

Corruption in Africa: The Way Forward

2019, International Journal of Political Science (IJPS)

The slogans by African leaders such as “Africa Beyond Aid” by the President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, would continue to be an empty slogan if the fight against corruption is not won within the continent. Corruption is an act of deviation from good and causes the African continent to lose revenue. African governments must take the fight against corruption seriously by increasing punishment for offenders, increasing surveillance on governments’ agents, and commercializing the fight against corruption. By doing so the continent would excel in controlling these prominent acts of corruption by government agents, thereby leading to more revenue being accrued for developmental purposes.

Related Papers

South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences

Geoff Harris

The aim of this study is to ascertain perceptions of public sector corruption that university students, as potentially influential members of society, hold. The study is based on a purposive sample of 509 first- and second-year university students. Descriptive and non-parametric bivariate analysis suggests that students overwhelmingly regard public sector corruption as an important issue. In addition, there appear to be remarkable degrees of consensus as to what actions are perceived as corrupt even if there is evidence of mismatches between students’ beliefs and likely actions. At least some of this dissonance may be explained by the finding that respondents' corruption perceptions are biased by gender and ethnicity. These are challenges that programmes aimed at inspiring mass public opinion to join the fight against corruption may have to address.

The Indonesian Journal of Development Planning

Muhyiddin Muhyiddin

This paper tries to investigate and explain the impact of corruption on per capita GDP across 105 countries. The distinction of this paper comparing to earlier studies is to investigate that the impact of corruption on development is different among countries by involving dummy developed and developing countries and cluster geographical areas (Western and developed countries, Developing countries in Asia, Africa, South America and Caribbean, and Eastern Europe and Ex Soviet Union). The methods used are OLS, 2SLS, and fixed effects regressions. The results show that first, by using OLS and 2SLS, the impact of corruption on per capita GDP is negatively significant. Fixed effects estimation show no impact of corruption on per capita GDP but this is probably due to the short panel as well as measurement error. Second, developing countries have higher impact of corruption on per capita GDP rather than developed countries. Third, looking on across geographical areas, developing countries in Eastern Europe and Ex Soviet Union have the highest negative impact, and then in Asia, Africa, Western and developed countries, and the lowest is in developing countries in South America and Caribbean.

World Development

Adekanye Jumoke

Michael Scaldini

SSRN Electronic Journal

Rafael di Tella

The Economic Journal

Toke S Aidt

Political Economy - Development: Underdevelopment & Poverty eJournal

THABANI NYONI

Corruption is very harmful and unacceptable. It is one of the major obstacles to sustainable economic growth and development. Corruption has a negative effect on every sphere of any economy. This is what many people think. We used to think so too! But, guess what? There is sufficient empirical evidence supporting the fact that corruption is not always harmful to the economy. In fact, there are some instances where corruption can be indeed fruitful, though; not, generally acceptable. Debatable, as it sounds; and yet this is the reality. Although the study neither recommend nor encourage corruption so far, the study still maintains its hyperopic view that corruption is not always harmful to the economy. In fact the research strongly argues that corruption, especially in Zimbabwe; has been and continues to be a blessing in disguise!

Richard Kakeeto , Ibolya Losoncz

The fight against corruption is vital to the human rights movement. Anti-corruption activist and human rights campaigners share the common goals of eliminating the corruption and bribery that denies people the rights and services they are entitled to. While human rights and corruption are not always connected, the increased use of corruption in the form of abuse of political, economic, social and cultural power means that the connections between the two are growing stronger. Yet, anti-corruption and human rights movements tend to work in parallel rather than together. The current paper uses the theoretical framework put forward by Transparency International and the International Council on Human Rights Policy to analyse the mechanics of corruption and the violation of one of the most fundamental human rights, the right to food, in Kenya. Through this example, the paper will explore how the human rights framework can add value to the anti-corruption work and how corrupt practices violate human rights. The paper will conclude by identifying opportunities for collaboration between human rights and anti- corruption organizations to deal more effectively with food security in Kenya.

RELATED PAPERS

International Public Management Review

Kim Moloney

Corruption in Okeke Chika Jerry's The Government Worker

Alain C . Hounzavi

Snow White , Jens Christopher C H R Andvig

Jens Christopher C H R Andvig

Tone Sissener

Journal of business ethics

Daniel E Agbiboa (DPhil. Oxon. MPhil. Cantab)

Jibril Shehu Mustapha

Emmanuel Obuah

Omer Ismail

Critical Perspectives on Accounting

Olatunde Julius Otusanya

Mike Basopu

Policy Research Working Papers

Susan Rose-Ackerman

Odd-Helge Fjeldstad , S. Lange

Khaled Anup

kolawole olaoni

Dr. Ishaka Dele , Zainab Kankara

Grimot Nane

Alf Beauman (PI) 🇪🇺

john ohiorhenuan

Nasiru Zubairu

International journal of physical education, sports and health

Okwudili Nwosu

basiru abdulahi

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

Anastasia Litina

Kingsley E Haynes

Emeka W. Dumbili , Adedayo Sofadekan

University of Copenhagen Economics Working Paper No. 10-11

Jean-robert Tyran

Anum Ellahi

Fernanda Odilla

Bonnie J. Palifka

Daniels Ayala

Journal of European Union Criminal Law (EUCRIM) 3(4): 128-133. 2007

Bryane Michael

Faniel Sahle Habtemichael

CHUKWUJEKWU CHARLES ONWUKA

Joshua Alabi

13 Economics and the Study of Corruption in Africa

M. A. Thomas, Associate Professor of International Development, The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University.

Published: 02 September 2014
Cite Icon Cite
Permissions Icon Permissions

Historically economists have turned to principal-agent models to explain corruption and expected utility models to model bribe transactions. These models depend on a definition of corruption that assumes a government with separate public and private spheres. However, the existence of separate public and private roles cannot be assumed in a number of countries, including some African countries. As political economists bridge the gap between the political science and economics literatures on corruption, bringing wider awareness of governments that hold power through the distribution of private goods to elites, traditional economic models of corruption must become more contextualized. “Africa” is not an analytically useful category for the study of corruption.

Corruption is frequently raised as an important concern in discussions of Africa by both international and domestic stakeholders. It is a recurring theme in the media, in dialogue between foreign aid donors and recipient governments, and in African domestic politics. How has economics approached the study of corruption in Africa, and how does the study of corruption in Africa shape the economic study of corruption? The question is complex, turning on the definition of corruption, the boundaries between academic disciplines, and the utility of Africa as an analytic category for the study of corruption. The work of political economists focused on national political economy features—much of it focused on Africa and in line with an older literature in political science—challenges older economic models of corruption and even the assumptions that underlie the definition of corruption itself.

The attention given to corruption in Africa may reflect the increased attention to corruption as a topic. There has been an explosion of academic literature on corruption in the last decade. In addition to more traditional work based on survey data, the availability of indicators of corruption and perceptions of corruption provided by entities such as the World Bank, Transparency International, and commercial political risk firms has led to thousands of studies seeking to establish the relationship between corruption and other variables of interest, such as foreign aid, foreign trade, inequality, conflict, and economic growth. New experimental work in corruption, including laboratory, field, and natural experiments, has explored the relationships between the structure of incentives and individual decision making in corrupt transactions.

It is not always clear what economists have learned from this work on corruption. As Olken and Pande (2012 : 3) put it in a survey of the economic literature on corruption in developing countries

if we were asked by a politician seeking to make his or her country eligible for Millennium Challenge aid or the head of an anti-corruption agency what guidance the economic literature could give them about how to tackle a problem, we realized, beyond a few core economic principles, we had more questions to pose than concrete answers.

Lively methodological debates have been valuable in themselves, but also make it more difficult to identify where knowledge has advanced.

It is even more difficult to identify what economists have learned about corruption in Africa. There is a long history of treating Africa as if it were sui generis , but is there such a thing as African corruption, deserving of special consideration and treatment? If Africa is not a special case, then the question of what economists have learned about corruption in Africa is indistinguishable from the question of what economists have learned about corruption generally. At the same time, more targeted studies of corruption raise questions of external validity, making it hard to say whether studies conducted outside of Africa might nevertheless be relevant to the study of corruption in some African context, or whether studies conducted in Africa can be generalized to other African contexts, or even the same place at a different time.

If the study of corruption in Africa is to be distinguished from the study of corruption more generally the distinction must lie in interrelated features of political economy that, for historical reasons, are common in African countries (although neither unique to Africa nor universal in Africa). These include national poverty with its consequent low government revenue and capacity, governance by means of the distribution of private goods to elites, dependence on revenue from natural resources or foreign aid, and conflict. The study of the relationship between these factors and corruption—much of which has focused on African countries—implicitly challenges the assumptions of much of the corruption literature.

Section 1 explains the common paradigms in economics and political economy used to model corruption, how corruption is commonly defined, and why the assumptions on which the definition relies can be limiting. Section 2 describes commonly encountered features of African political economy and their relation to corruption. Section 3 concludes by suggesting that economists can further contribute to the study of corruption by reexamining governance assumptions implicit in models, studies, and policy advice. A more contextualized approach means that Africa is not a useful analytic category for the study of corruption.

13.1 Corruption: Definition and Paradigms

The most commonly used definition of corruption is “use of public office for private gain,” a simplified version of a definition first advanced by Nye (1967) . This definition encompasses many possible behaviors such as sale of influence, nepotism, embezzlement, and theft, and many types of private gain including personal gain and gain for one’s family, friends, or political party. It does not depend on the legality of the action, and some types of corruption may be legal, as was congressional insider trading in the USA until 2012. 1

Within economics and political economy the study of corruption has focused primarily on bribe exchange. The earliest and simplest microeconomic models of bribe transactions assume that there is a probability that a corrupt act will be detected and punished, and that a rational actor maximizes his expected utility by weighing the bribe against the probability and severity of punishment (see, e.g., Klitgaard 1988 ; Cadot 1987 ). Principal-agent models of corruption posit a corrupt agent imperfectly monitored by an honest principal. In some versions of the model, the agent is a lower level bureaucrat and the principal is the supervisor. In other versions, the agent is a corrupt politician and the honest principal is the citizenry.

Both the definition of corruption and the economic models that rely upon it rest on a number of assumptions that limit their utility. First, they focus exclusively on the behavior of those holding public office, ignoring the role of private parties. Many corrupt transactions include both a government actor and a private party. Although private parties may be victims of extortion, they may also be fully complicit or instigators of corrupt transactions. Where governments are weak, private actors may even be in the position to coerce government actors into participation in corrupt acts.

The exclusive focus on the role of government actors also means, perversely, that corruption can be eliminated by definition by eliminating the role of government: by privatizing, outsourcing, or abandoning government functions. For the customer who must still pay a bribe for an electrical hookup, however, it matters little whether the bribe must be paid to an employee of a public or a private utility company. Alternate definitions of corruption have been proposed in an attempt to capture private sector activity.

Second, the definition rests on implicit assumptions about the nature of governance. “Corruption” is defined as a deviant act in a broader political context in which there is a clear distinction between public and private spheres and there exist public offices whose powers and assets are entrusted to an office holder solely for use to benefit the public. This is not an empirical description of government, but a normative aspiration, and it is not universally shared. The distinction between public and private government office and resources would not apply, for example, in absolute monarchies. It can also be questioned in other contexts where the ordinary operation of the government does not seem to respect such distinctions. For example, President Bongo of Gabon did not appear to embrace such distinctions when he argued that discretionary funds allocated to presidents by the state could be used for public, political, or personal purposes (“to pay for the liberation of hostages under the table, to buy out political opponents, to finance their political parties, to buy jewels, or to give the money to dogs”) ( Bongo 2001 : 277). He similarly pointed to his private accounts in Citibank and argued that they were used to serve public purposes such as redistribution to the Gabonese, support of universities, hosting of diplomatic summits, or the purchase of ambassadorial residences ( Bongo 2001 : 291–292). When challenged by a journalist, Bongo asked whether the Palace of Versailles was built with King Louis XIV’s money or the money of France, implying that there was no distinction. His willingness to discuss this openly with a journalist suggests that he would face no consequences in Gabon for failure to observe the distinction.

Finally, the word “corruption” is a normative and pejorative umbrella term. A synonym of “corruption” in English is “depravity” (Merriam-Webster). The normative load risks tangling social science efforts to study behaviors with the policy and advocacy efforts to reduce or eliminate them. At the same time, the breadth of the term obscures the differences between the causes, consequences, and frequencies of different behaviors such as bribe exchange (whether consensual or extorted), nepotism, or embezzlement.

The limitations of the definition are of special concern in the study of corruption in Africa. Africa is home to a number of weak governments, as well as governments that, like Bongo’s Gabon, may not fully subscribe to the implicit governance assumptions of the definition. This is true notwithstanding the fact that these distinctions are made in domestic law.

13.2 African Political Economy Factors

With 55 recognized states that include low-income and high-income economies, with parliamentary democracies and military dictatorships that are coastal and landlocked, desert and rain forest, in conflict and in peace, and home to more than 2000 languages, there are few statements that could be true of all of the African continent. However, the twin processes of colonization and decolonization by which Africa was folded into the modern state system left broad imprints.

Much of Africa was claimed by European colonial powers in the “scramble for Africa” during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The scramble was a competitive rush to establish exclusive spheres of influence in order to gain control of African resources, markets, and land. European colonial claims encompassed both areas of colonial settlement and areas that colonial powers had not even explored and over which their control was never more than nominal. They claimed both areas that were well resourced and populated and barren areas in which few people lived. Some dependencies were poor and never profitable enough to pay for their own administration. They created two-tier political systems that distinguished between colonial citizens, to whom they had some degree of accountability, and colonial subjects, to whom they did not.

At the beginning of the colonial era, there was little consideration of the obligation to invest in the welfare of colonial subjects and no intention of moving towards independence for most colonies. By the 1940s, colonial powers began to feel a greater sense of responsibility to colonial subjects, in conjunction with changing ideas of the role of government at home. However, the same shifts in norms that catalyzed this sense of responsibility also made colonialism indefensible and untenable, and contributed to bringing the colonial era to a close. Most of Africa gained independence by the 1960s; the last African state to gain independence was Zimbabwe in 1980.

Colonial administrative boundaries became international boundaries, spawning a number of new states, some of which were landlocked. At the same time, to facilitate decolonization, the international community waived the requirement of international law that states have effective governments, recognizing new African states regardless. As a consequence, some African states were created with governments that, like the colonial administrations they succeeded, had only nominal control over territories that had never previously been governed as states. For them, state-building was a post-independence task.

For some, it has faltered. Civil conflict broke out in a number of African states. Military regimes replaced elected governments by coup, often citing government corruption as their motivation, until a wave of democratization began in the 1990s. While some countries saw successful peaceful transitions of power through democratic elections, for most democratic institutions remain fragile.

The new African states also inherited the formal institutions and laws of their former colonizers. However, the rules themselves did not necessarily reflect local norms and African governments often lacked the revenue and capacity to implement and enforce them. Many African polities were characterized by “big man” or neopatrimonial politics, in which a leader maintained power by doling out positions and resources to political supporters. Democracy, when it arrived, was characterized by clientelism, in which politicians dole out private goods to a small base of supporters. Notwithstanding, the process of transference of laws and institutions from the West by imitation or under pressure continues. Most African countries are parties to the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, which requires parties to pass domestic laws criminalizing corruption, and most corrupt acts are criminal under domestic law. 2

The consequence of this historical legacy was the creation of a number of African states that are poor, with governments with little revenue and capacity, governments that have weak mechanisms of popular accountability, governments that depend on redistributing private benefits informally to a limited elite, governments whose revenue derives from natural resources or foreign aid, governments whose control of their territories is challenged by conflict, and governments that have high levels of corruption. Because many African countries have more than one of these interrelated characteristics, it can be difficult to tease apart the impact of these factors, making cross-country studies susceptible to problems of endogeneity.

13.2.1 Poverty, low government revenue, and low capacity

Although there are methodological debates about measuring corruption (see, e.g., Thomas 2010 ), and existing measures of corruption are heterogenous ( Olken and Pande 2012 ) “[w]‌ith few exceptions, the most corrupt countries have low income levels” (Svensson 2005 : 24). This is an important finding for the study of corruption in Africa because Africa is home to most of the world’s poorest countries.

Studies have focused on the ways in which high corruption levels could impede economic growth and contribute to poverty; however, there are also channels by which poverty could influence corruption levels. Poor countries have poor governments. The lack of government resources and capacity undercuts the government’s ability to make, disseminate, implement, and enforce laws, including anticorruption and criminal laws. Poor governments also have poorly and irregularly paid civil servants, tacitly relying upon them to pay their own wages by monetizing their offices. The limited opportunities for employment and wealth accumulation in the private sector may lead people to seek government employment in search of financial rewards.

The type of government envisioned by the definition of corruption—namely, a government that governs by means of the legitimacy gained from providing public goods and services impersonally to all citizens under the rule of law—is expensive, becoming available to a handful of wealthy industrialized countries only in the last century ( Thomas 2015 ). Accordingly, there is a threshold effect. Although increased revenue does not guarantee a shift to this type of government, governments that lack the revenue to provide universal public goods and services must of necessity rely on older, cheaper strategies of governance, such as patronage. The higher levels of corruption in poor countries are therefore a consequence of both low capacity and strategies of governance. That these practices are in conflict with domestic and international law further weakens the law as a mechanism of coordination for both government and society.

13.2.2 Governance

Two related lines of argument point to the way in which governments hold power as critical to the understanding of corruption levels. The first focuses on the strength of mechanisms of popular accountability, which are thought to allow citizens to check government corruption; the second, on governments that govern through the distribution of private benefits to elites. Many African governments are thought to have weak popular accountability and to depend on distribution of private benefits to elites to govern.

13.2.2.1 Accountability

One approach to the study of corruption is through the lens of principal-agent theory in which the government is cast as the agent tempted to corruption and the citizenry as the honest principal who imperfectly monitors and sanctions the agent. Drury, Krieckhaus, and Lusztig (2006) , for example, find that corruption does not impede economic growth in democracies, as corruption annoys voters who can then remove politicians (see also Adserà, Boix, and Payne 2003 ).

In Africa, however, democratic accountability is historically weak. Corruption is vocally condemned, yet there is evidence that the leading concerns of African citizens are poverty and unemployment, rather than corruption in government. 3 Popular tolerance of corrupt practices varies substantially at the national and subnational level and depends on the exact behavior under discussion. The ability of the public to monitor and its willingness and ability to sanction are also likely to be highly contextual.

One mediator is thought to be government transparency, although Kolstad and Wiig (2009) point out that transparency alone is insufficient to control corruption where citizens lack effective means for exerting control over politicians; on the contrary, in some circumstances greater transparency could lead to greater corruption Tests of the impact on corruption levels of improvements to transparency have yielded mixed results. The Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) was pioneered by the World Bank in Uganda in 1996 to trace funds disbursed from the Ministry of Finance through intermediate levels of government to the final spending unit, typically a health clinic or school ( Reinikka and Svensson 2004 ). The original Ugandan PETS found that most schools received nothing of what was budgeted to them for nonwage expenditures. Anecdotal evidence suggested that the funds were diverted for use for political patronage. Reinikka and Svensson (2005) examined the impact of informing parents of the school budget to see whether parents empowered with information would then monitor and correct leakages of funds. They found that following the information campaign the flow of funds to schools was much improved. However, it is difficult to tease out the impact of this intervention from the larger context of donor scrutiny of the education sector and the related conditionality that followed the alarming result of the PETS ( Hubbard 2007 ).

Humphreys and Weinstein (2012 : 36) disseminated information about the performance of Ugandan members of parliament to voters, but found that these efforts had no impact on the reelection of MPs. “One preliminary conclusion from this experience is that the popular hypothesis that transparency alone leads to improvements in performance is overly optimistic” ( Humphreys and Weinstein 2012 : 36). They conclude that either a stronger dissemination campaign might have been necessary or that perhaps reelection depends on factors other than performance in office, such as personalistic ties or financing.

Another mechanism of popular control that has been suggested because of its role in British history is the financial dependence of government on domestic taxes. Some argue that the payment of direct taxes such as income tax creates both popular demand for and the means of control of government (see, e.g., Moore 2004 ). However, African governments rely heavily on other financing sources, such as indirect taxes, taxes on trade, foreign aid, and revenue from natural resources.

13.2.2.2 Extractive institutions

Principal-agent arguments that cast the public as the principal assume that the power to govern depends on the public, whether because a democratic government requires voter support or because it depends on the public for revenue. A second line of literature considers governments that are not as dependent on popular support to govern. It describes governments that are the product of a redistributive bargain among elites in which government authority, jobs, contracts, or monopolies are awarded not for the purpose of serving the public, as is assumed in the definition of corruption, but as private benefits that recipients are free to monetize. Political scientists and Africanists studying the newly independent African states named this type of governance “neopatrimonial,” building on the work of sociologist Max Weber (1947) . Although the political science literature is outside the scope of this article, there is an extensive political science literature on neopatrimonial regimes in Africa and researchers interested in corruption should not hesitate at disciplinary boundaries (see, e.g., Roth 1968 ; Lemarchand 1972 ; Eisenstadt 1973 ; Le Vine 1980 ; Médard 1991 ; Bayart 1993 ; Bayart, Ellis, and Hibou 1999 ; Van de Walle 2001 ; Chabal and Daloz 1999 ; Herbst 2000 ).

Economists have paid increasing attention to this type of governance and its implications for economic growth, distribution, technological innovation, and policy implementation. A canonical piece by Olson considered the incentives of governments that provide a modicum of security to citizens in return for the extraction of productive surplus for the benefit of the ruling “stationary bandit” ( Olson 1993 ). North, Wallis, and Weingast (2009) described “limited access orders” as one of three types of social orders. Under limited access orders, elites provide social stability in return for privileged control over resources or activities from which they earn rents. They simultaneously restrict both the number of and access to economic, political, religious, educational, and military organizations as well as entry into trade, because expanding the pool of elites diminishes rents. Violence is a regular form of political and economic competition and elites are aligned with military specialists. The uncertainty and distortion of market and price signals in limited access orders impedes economic growth as well as the collection of tax revenue.

Acemoglu and Robinson (2012) focused more narrowly on political institutions as determinative of the type of economic institutions that can be created and adopted. Their framework defined “inclusive” and “extractive” political and economic institutions. Extractive political institutions are those in which political centralization may be lacking and power is held by a narrow elite who use their political power to maintain economic institutions designed to enrich them at the expense of non-elites. Extractive political institutions usually support and maintain extractive economic institutions. Elites resist centralization and act to suppress technological innovation and social change that might result in a loss of their privilege. As a consequence growth comes only from the reallocation of existing resources and so is self-limiting and not sustainable. Growth also invites elite fighting over the division of rents and is potentially destabilizing.

North, Wallis, and Weingast (2009) described limited access orders as the default organization of human society. However, Acemoglu and Robinson (2012) pointed to the legacy of colonialism to explain variation in the nature of African political institutions. They argued that where geographic conditions made European settlement more attractive, Europeans settled and established more inclusive institutions; where settlement did not happen, they established extractive institutions ( Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2001 ; Acemoglu and Robinson 2012 ). They argued that extractive institutions explain African poverty, conflict, and failed states, while the preservation or construction of inclusive institutions explains African successes.

Although these governments are sometimes described as systemically corrupt, corruption is a deviation from an assumed norm of public office for public benefit. In neopatrimonial governments, the political systems of limited access orders, or governments with extractive institutions there is no “public” office whose purpose is to be used for the “public” benefit, or at the very least, this norm is weakly established. The private use of government office and authority is not a deviant and opportunistic act but the routine operation of government and the glue that holds the government together and makes it possible. Scholars have described many governments, including some African governments, as the product of such redistributive bargains.

13.2.3 Resource curse

Another line of literature considers the relationship between corruption and government dependence on natural resource revenues. Africa is gifted with rich reserves of oil, natural gas, minerals, and revenues from natural resource extraction are an important source of government finance for a number of governments. However, studies have shown that in some countries resource extraction that has provided the government with revenue has failed to translate into higher standards of living and instead has been accompanied by lower growth rates, higher levels of corruption, and sometimes conflict ( Van der Ploeg 2011 ). Literature on the “resource curse” examines both the circumstances under which resources are a curse and the nature of the curse.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the consensus is that the impact of resource revenues is mediated by the quality of governance ( Morrison 2010 ). Governments with stronger rule of law and more accountable institutions are more likely to manage resource revenues in ways that benefit the public. For example, Botswana’s management of diamonds has been held up as an African success story (see, e.g., Robinson, Acemoglu, and Johnson 2003 ).

In countries with weak rule of law where governance is characterized by redistribution to elites, increased government revenues lead to higher levels of corruption and in some cases, increased competition for government rents that can lead to conflict. Vicente (2010) considered the impact of oil wealth in São Tomé and Príncipe, finding that anticipated revenues increased corruption levels, reflected in increased vote buying, state jobs, and corruption in the education and health sectors. Arezki and Gylfason (2013) considered the interaction between resource rents and corruption for 29 sub-Saharan countries from 1985 to 2007, finding that higher resource rents increase corruption particularly in nondemocratic countries. Voors, Bulte, and Damania (2011) similarly found that in Africa positive income shocks increase corruption, especially in countries that already have high levels of corruption.

The governments of low-income African countries remain heavily dependent on foreign aid. Another literature considers whether foreign aid has a similar impact, given that it also provides non-tax revenue to governments (see, e.g., Morrison 2010 ; Svensson 2000 ). Collier (2006) argued that aid is subject to donor oversight and conditionality, unlike natural resource revenues. Okada and Samreth (2012) similarly concluded that foreign aid lessens corruption, particularly in countries that have low levels of corruption to begin with.

13.2.4 Conflict

Most of the world’s conflicts today are in Africa and Asia (Buhaug, Gates, Hegre, and Strand). Conflict can drive corruption. It can lead government to deprioritize corruption control in favor of security issues, reduce the resources available for law enforcement, or lead to the bypassing of processes and organizations intended to ensure financial control even as government makes urgent defense expenditures.

A line of literature, however, examines the impact of corruption on conflict, particularly in the context of conflicts over natural resources. The literature is divided on whether higher resource rents lead to violent competition for access, or may be stabilizing as they give the government more patronage to disburse and offer the possibility of ending conflict by purchasing peace (see Le Billon 2003 ). Arezki and Gylfason (2013) found that in less democratic countries in sub-Saharan Africa, higher resource rents reduce conflict through redistribution to the public.

13.2.5 High levels of corruption

Whether because of poverty, governance strategies, dependence on resource revenues, or conflict, many African countries are considered to have high levels of corruption. High corruption levels shape the expectations, opportunities, and incentives of government actors, making high levels of corruption self-reinforcing and persistent. In other words, corruption can be both cause and consequence. In high corruption equilibria, the likelihood of punishment for corrupt acts is reduced and finding partners for corrupt transactions is easier. At the extreme, a refusal to participate in corrupt arrangements is unrewarded or even costly ( Andvig 1991 ).

Multiple equilibrium models have been used to explain how high levels of corruption can exist and persist, or to explore corruption dynamics (see, e.g., Andvig 1991 ; Lui 1986 ). Persson, Rothstein, and Teorell (2010) argued that persistent corruption is a collective action problem. Khan (2008) advanced a model of corruption in which people take their behavioral cues from others, positing a bandwagon effect in corruption.

There is some evidence that citizens from countries with high levels of corruption may be more likely to participate in corrupt transactions even in countries with lower levels of corruption. Fisman and Miguel (2007) , for example, use a change in the enforcement of parking laws for diplomats as a natural experiment in corruption. Until 2002, New York City did not have a mechanism for punishing diplomats with parking violations; starting in 2002, the city began to confiscate the diplomatic plates of offenders. The study finds that diplomats from countries perceived to be corrupt according to Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) were more likely to accumulate unpaid parking violations in the absence of enforcement. The authors hypothesized that diplomats carried national norms to their new environment. Barr and Serra (2010) attempted to replicate this result in a laboratory experiment in the United Kingdom with students from 34 countries. They found that while the CPI of the country of origin of the student was a statistically significant predictor of the propensity to engage in bribe exchange for undergraduate students, it was not for graduate students. They suggested that graduate students may have assimilated and lost their home country values, or that the selection process for undergraduate and graduate students may be different.

13.3 Conclusion

The study of corruption in Africa exposes the fragility and specificity of the assumptions of governance that underlie both the definition of corruption and many economic models and studies. Where the government governs by sharing out government offices, authority, and resources as private benefits to powerful elites, corruption is much more than an individual act of bribe taking. It is a political system that is not described by distinct public and private spheres in which public offices, authority, and resources are to be used for the public benefit. These systems frame expectations and set the broader incentives for private use of government office. Both North, Wallis, and Weingast (2009) and Acemoglu and Robinson (2012) see such systems as persistent and difficult to change.

If this political system is both persistent and the most common—the default system of human social organization—it makes the study of corruption parochial, and suggests that the research questions about corruption should be inverted. The question is not why corruption happens, but why it does not. Punishment for corrupt acts should be studied, not assumed. Studies of the efficiency costs of corruption usually assume a counterfactual of no corruption; perhaps they should assume a counterfactual of no government.

Similarly, economists should revisit policy recommendations to ensure that they are robust to change in their underlying assumptions about both levels of corruption and punishment. For example, in the abstract, one-stop shopping for government permits and processes might be recommended on efficiency grounds, but this also creates a more valuable monopoly in government authority that can be exploited for rents. Some have suggested that creating multiple dispersed service providers would create competition that would result in rents being bid down to zero (see, e.g., Rose-Ackerman 1999 ), although this assumes perfect competition.

If economists are to consider the broader incentive for corrupt acts in studies of corruption, they need more specific information about the incentive structures for a specific behavior in a specific place. Binary classifications such as “limited” versus “open” or “inclusive” versus “extractive” may not sufficiently capture either the complexity of national institutions or the variation among subnational ones. A classification system that puts most governments in the world in a single basket is of limited analytic utility; indeed, this is the complaint that has long been advanced about the term “neopatrimonial.” More work remains to be done to identify relevant incentive structures to ensure that macro-level studies of corruption do not suffer from endogeneity problems. Here it would be useful for economists to become more familiar with the political science literature on regime types that is both more extensive and more nuanced; and with the literature on patronage in anthropology, which considers patronage as a social system.

Some economists do seek a more nuanced understanding of the local incentives of both government and private actors. An example of this kind of work is Sequeira and Djankov (2010) , which studied the payment of bribes paid by shippers to clear the ports in Maputo, Mozambique, and Durban, South Africa. The study considered the amounts of bribes, but also the differing circumstances under which they were paid, the different incentives of custom officials on each country, and the different efficiency consequences for shippers between corruption that is “coercive” and corruption that is “collusive.” Another example is Delavallade (2012) , which analyzes a 2004–2005 survey of North African firms to explore the relationship between tax evasion and bribe payments, concluding that when the risk of tax fraud detection is low, firms that hide sales pay more bribes; when it is higher, firms that hide sales are less likely to pay bribes. However, these results, like those of other targeted studies, cannot be generalized beyond their specific contexts. Just as the term “corruption” requires unpacking, there is sufficient variation to call into question the utility of regional consideration of corruption. “Africa” is not a useful analytic category for the study of corruption.

Acemoglu, D. , Johnson, S. , and Robinson, J.A. ( 2001 ). The colonial origins of comparative development: an empirical investigation. The American Economic Review , 91(5):1369–1401.

Google Scholar

Robinson, J.A. , Acemoglu, D. , and Johnson, S. ( 2003 ). “An African Success Story: Botswana”, in D. Rodrik (ed.), In Search of Prosperity: Analytic Narratives on Economic Growth . Princeton: Princeton University Pres, pp. 80–119.

Google Preview

Acemoglu, D. , and Robinson, J.A. ( 2012 ). Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. New York: Crown Publishers.

Adserà, A. , Boix, C. , and Payne, M. ( 2003 ). Are you being served? Political accountability and quality of government. Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization , 19(2):445–490.

Andvig, J.C. ( 1991 ). The economics of corruption: a survey. Studi Economici , 43:57–94.

Arezki, R. , and Gylfason, T. ( 2013 ). Resource rents, democracy, corruption and conflict; evidence from sub-Saharan Africa. Journal of African Economies , 22(4):552–569.

Barr, A. , and Serra, D. ( 2010 ). Corruption and culture: an experimental analysis. Journal of Public Economics , 94(11–12):862–869.

Bayart, J.-F. ( 1993 ). The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly . London: Longman.

Bayart, J.-F. , Ellis, S. , and Hibou, B. ( 1999 ). The Criminalization of the State in Africa . Oxford, Bloomington & Indianapolis: James Currey & Indiana University Press.

Bongo, O. ( 2001 ). Blanc Comme Negre . Paris: Grasset et Fasquelle.

Buhaug, H. , Gates, S. , Hegre, H. , and Strand, H. Global Trends in Armed Conflict . Oslo: Centre for the Study of Civil War, International Peace Research Institute, Oslo. http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/ud/kampanjer/refleks/innspill/engasjement/prio.html?id=492941 (accessed 10/22/ 2013 ).

Cadot, O. ( 1987 ). Corruption as a gamble. Journal of Public Economics , 33(2):223–244.

Chabal, P. , and Daloz, J.-P. ( 1999 ). Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument (African Issues). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Collier, P. ( 2006 ). Is aid oil? An analysis of whether Africa can absorb more aid. World Development , 34(9):1482–1497.

Delavallade, C. ( 2012 ). What drives corruption? Evidence from North African firms. Journal of African Economies , 21(4):499–547.

Drury, A.C. , Krieckhaus J. , and Lusztig, M. ( 2006 ). Corruption, democracy, and economic growth. International Political Science Review , 27(2):121–136.

Eisenstadt, S.N. ( 1973 ). Traditional Patrimonialism and Modern Neopatrimonialism . London: Sage Publications.

Fisman, R. , and Miguel, E. ( 2007 ). Corruption, norms, and legal enforcement: evidence from diplomatic parking tickets. Journal of Political Economy , 115(6):1020–1048.

Herbst, J. ( 2000 ). States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control . Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Hubbard, P. (2007). Putting the Power of Transparency in Context: Information’s Role in Reducing Corrupt ion in Uganda’s Education Sector. Center for Global Development Working Paper No. 136. http://www.cgdev.org/publication/putting-power-transparency-context-informations-role-reducing-corruption-ugandas (accessed 10/8/2013).

Humphreys, M. , and Weinstein, J. (2012). Policing politicians: citizen empowerment and political accountability in Uganda: preliminary analysis. Typescript.

Khan, F. ( 2008 ). Understanding the spread of systemic corruption in the third world. American Review of Political Economy , 6(2):16–39.

Klitgaard, R. ( 1988 ). Controlling corruption . Berkeley, CA: University of California.

Kolstad, I. , and Wiig, A. ( 2009 ). Is transparency the key to reducing corruption in resource-rich countries? World Development , 37(3):521–532.

Le Vine, V.T. ( 1980 ). African patrimonial regimes in comparative perspective. Journal of Modern African Studies , 18(4):657–673.

Lemarchand, R. ( 1972 ). Political clientelism and ethnicity in tropical Africa: competing solidarities in nation-building. American Political Science Review , 66(1):68–90.

Le Billon, P. ( 2003 ). Buying peace or fueling war: the role of corruption in armed conflicts. Journal of International Development , 15:413–426.

Lui, F. ( 1986 ). A dynamic model of corruption deterrence. Journal of Public Economics , 31(2):215–236.

Médard, J.F. ( 1991 ). L’état néo-patrimonial en Afrique noire, in J.F. Médard (ed.), États d’Afrique Noire. Formations, Mécanismes et Crise . Paris: Karthala, pp. 323-354.

Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster Dictionary. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/corruption (accessed 10/22/2013).

Moore, M. ( 2004 ). Revenues, state formation, and the quality of governance in developing countries. International Political Science Review , 25(3):297–319.

Morrison, K. ( 2010 ). What can we learn about the ‘resource curse’ from foreign aid? The World Bank Research Observer , 27(1):52–73.

North, D.C. , Wallis, J.J., and Weingast, B.R. ( 2009 ). Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nye, J.S. ( 1967 ). Corruption and political development. American Political Science Review , 61(2):417–427.

Okada, K. , and Samreth, S. ( 2012 ). The effect of foreign aid on corruption: a quantile regression approach. Economics Letters , 115(2):240–243.

Olken, B. , and Pande, R. ( 2012 ). “ Corruption in Developing Countries. ” Annual Review of Economics , 4:479–509.

Olson, M. ( 1993 ). Dictatorship, democracy, and development. American Political Science Review , 87(3):567–576.

Persson, A. , Rothstein, B. , and Teorell, J. (2010). The Failure of Anti-Corruption Policies: A Theoretical Mischaracterization of the Problem. QoG Working Paper Series 19.

Reinikka, R. , and Svensson, J. ( 2004 ). Local capture: evidence from a central government transfer program in Uganda. Quarterly Journal of Economics , 119(2):679–705.

Reinikka, R. , and Svensson, J. ( 2005 ). Fighting corruption to improve schooling: Evidence from a newspaper campaign in Uganda. Journal of the European Economic Association , 3(2–3):259–267.

Rose-Acerkman, S. ( 1999 ). Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences, and Reform . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Roth, G. ( 1968 ). Personal rulership, patrimonialism and empire building in the new states. World Politics , 20(2):194–206.

Sequeira, S. , and Djankov, S. (2010). An empirical study of corruption in ports. http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/21791/ (accessed 10/8/2013).

Shaxson, N. ( 2007 ). Oil, corruption and the resource curse. International Affairs , 83(6):1123–1140.

Svensson, J. ( 2000 ). Foreign aid and rent-seeking. Journal of International Economics , 51(2):437–61.

Svensson, J. ( 2005 ). Eight questions about corruption. Journal of Economic Perspectives , 19(3):19–42.

Thomas, M.A. ( 2010 ). What do the worldwide governance indicators measures? European Journal of Development Research , 22:31–54.

Thomas, M.A. ( 2015 ). Govern Like Us: U.S. Expectations of Poor Countries. New York: Columbia University Press.

Van de Walle, N. ( 2001 ). African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979–1999 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Van der Ploeg, F. ( 2011 ). Natural resources: curse or blessing? Journal of Economic Literature , 49(2):366–420.

Vicente, P. ( 2010 ). Does oil corrupt? Evidence from a natural experiment in West Africa. Journal of Development Economics , 92:28–38.

Voors, M.J. , Bulte, E.H. , and Damania, R. ( 2011 ). Income shocks and corruption in Africa: does a virtuous cycle exist? Journal Of African Economies , 20(3):395–418.

Weber, Max . ( 1947 ). The Theory of Social and Economic Organization . New York: Oxford University Press.

In 2012, Congress passed the STOCK Act that prohibited this type of insider trading. See The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act (“STOCK” Act, Pub.L. 112–105, S. 2038, 126 Stat. 291, enacted April 4, 2012).

See Afrobarometer Round 5 (2010–2012) in which survey respondents were asked to name the most important problems facing the country that the government should address. www.afrobarometer.org (accessed 10/22/2013).

About Oxford Academic
Publish journals with us
University press partners
What we publish
New features
Open access
Institutional account management
Rights and permissions
Get help with access
Accessibility
Advertising
Media enquiries
Oxford University Press
Oxford Languages
University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

Cookie settings
Cookie policy
Privacy policy
Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

IMAGES

(PDF) Corruption in Africa: A Crisis in Ethical Leadership
Corruption in Africa: Causes and Solutions
(PDF) A Moral Economy of Corruption in Africa?
Corruption in South Africa
(PDF) Corruption Cleanups in Africa: Lessons From Public Choice Theory
Essay On Corruption [250-500 Words]

VIDEO

Avoid Corruption
Corruption in Africa verse corruption in Europe #africa #fact #hamas
Unveiling the African Agenda 2063 A New
FREE Europe Trip for Cancelled Flight! 🇧🇪🇨🇭🇸🇱
Africa For Haiti Chief Officer Edward Githaiga: There Are Several Amendments In The Bill
South Africa: No arrest imminent for embattled speaker of parliament until April 2

COMMENTS

(PDF) CORRUPTION AND GOVERNANCE IN AFRICA
corruption. Moreover, governance in Africa plays significant role in determining the relationship between the. leaders and t he followers in allocating state resources in order to improve the ...
PDF Corruption in Africa: Causes, Consequences, and Cleanups
Mbaku, John Mukum. Corruption in Africa: Causes, Consequences, and Cleanups . Lanham: Lexington Books, 2007, 402 pages, cloth; price not stated. Professor John Mukum Mbaku s excellent book is a comprehensive analysis of the impact of corruption on society. It is a textbook par excellence that provides discussion questions intended to advance ...
(PDF) The Phenomenon of Corruption in the South African Public Sector
The Phenomenon of Corruption in the South African Public Sector: Challenges and Opportunities. December 2014. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences 5 (27):1572-1580. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014 ...
PDF Bad Governance and Corruption in Africa: Symptoms of Leadership and
institutions in controlling corruption but also the lingering effects of institutionalized corruption in many African countries. 1. Introduction Starting from the claim that corruption sands the wheels of development in the African continent, this paper explores corruption within the context of weak or bad governance post-independence.
PDF Fighting Corruption in African Contexts
Fighting Corruption in African Contexts: Our Collective Responsibility xi accountable institutions, as was aptly put by the 1992 Nobel Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum, who observed that "without strong institutions, impunity becomes the very foundation upon which systems of corruption
PDF Essays on Political Corruption
Essays on Political Corruption Citation Faller, Julie Kathleen. 2015. Essays on Political Corruption. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. ... (Agang South Africa 2013). This followed a 2009 report from the Independent Panel of Assessment of Parliament, which argued that South Africa's party list ...
Channels of Corruption in Africa: An Analytical Review and ...
Corruption is a pervasive problem in African countries where bad governance tends to proliferate and institutions are weak. As the research of Kleinfeld (2019, p. 117) has found, and most applicable to Africa, "while often compared to cancer, corruption is much more like an epidemic," as "it is infectious," and "this 'culture of corruption' is real."
PDF Corruption in South Africa: The politics, the law and all the ...
South Africa has many problems: crime, unemployment, poverty, gender-based violence, inequality, low economic growth and now - in common with many other countries - COVID-19. The list goes on and on. What makes corruption the biggest threat among all these is that it cuts across all of them and impacts on their gravity in different ways.
Challenging Corruption in Africa: Beyond the Bleak Projections
Nuhu Ribadu is a prosecutor and police officer by training. Until 2007, he served as Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in Nigeria, which he helped establish in 2003. In this essay, he reflects on his experience as the head of the EFCC and the international work needed to challenge corruption in Africa. From the essay:
PDF Confronting Corruption in Ghana and Africa
Remedying the problem of corruption in Africa and Ghana today: the good news. Remedying the problem of corruption begins from an awareness of prevalence, recognition that corruption is a serious problem, and a commitment to tackle corruption. Fortunately, the last decade has witnessed a growing awareness of the problem of corruption and the ...
Corruption and Governance in Africa
This volume analyzes the corruption phenomenon in Africa and how to combat it from a governance perspective with illustrated case studies from three of the most corrupt of those nations covering, respectively, the Southern Africa region (Swaziland); the Eastern Africa region (Kenya); and the Western Africa region (Nigeria).
PDF CAUSES OF CORRUPTION EVIDENCE FROM SUB-S AFRICA
Abstract. This study explores the causes of corruption in 22 countries in sub-Saharan Africa from 1996 to 2013. The sources of corruption are grouped into three main thematic areas - historical roots, contemporary causes and institutional causes to make way for subjective and objective measures.
(PDF) Political leadership, corruption, and the crisis of governance in
Using a qualitative method of data collection and analysis, this paper interrogates the leadership-corruption nexus in relation to the prevailing crisis of governance in Africa. It argues that the ...
(PDF) Corruption in Africa: The Way Forward
The worst performing countries were in the Sub-Saharan Africa regions, with an average score of 32. In a 2015 Corruption in Africa survey conducted by TI [14], almost 75 million people in the Sub-Saharan Africa region were reported to have paid a bribe to government officials in the past year for various reasons.
Causes of Corruption: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa
This study explores the causes of corruption in 22 countries in sub-Saharan Africa from 1996 to 2013. The sources of corruption are grouped into three main thematic areas - historical roots, contemporary causes and institutional causes to make way for subjective and objective measures. The subjective measures allow for assessment of the effectiveness of anticorruption policies. Using pooled ...
PDF CORRUPTION AND REFORM IN DEMOCRATIC SOUTH AFRICA
grand corruption, an in-depth analysis of the government's handling of allegations of corruption in the Strategic Defense Procurement Package or "arms deal." The findings of the thesis are mixed: I argue that democracy is a necessary albeit insufficient condition for effectively fighting corruption. Although South Africa has
Tackling Corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa stands to gain more from reducing corruption than any other region. A new wave of leaders in sub-Saharan Africa has expressed renewed commitment to fighting corruption. This trend reflects a recognition that good governance is key to fostering growth and economic development. The link between growth and governance is ...
PDF Corruption in Africa: Cultural, Economic and Political Factors
The casual ties run both ways: power leads to corruption and corruption leads to power." 9. In regards to the second dimension of corruption, namely the economic sense and how it affects the political will of the society, one first needs to turn to the theory proposed by political economist William Forster Lloyd who, in 1832, examined the
PDF Corruption: Causes, Consequences and Cures
the corruption issue and to try and bring it under control. There is a growing worldwide concern over corruption at the present time. Several factors are responsible for this. First, a consensus has now been reached that corruption is universal. It exists in all countries, both developed and developing, in the public and private sectors,
13 Economics and the Study of Corruption in Africa
The attention given to corruption in Africa may reflect the increased attention to corruption as a topic. There has been an explosion of academic literature on corruption in the last decade. In addition to more traditional work based on survey data, the availability of indicators of corruption and perceptions of corruption provided by entities ...
African solutions to African problems: a narrative of corruption in
1. Introduction. The damage caused by political corruption on the African continent has been emphasized by several scholarly contributions (see Forson et al., Citation 2016; Warf, Citation 2017; Mkhize & Nel, Citation 2018; Naher et al., Citation 2020; Mkhize, Citation 2023).Corruption is a very visible part of African politics, and there have been several scandals that have received a lot of ...
PDF Article Countering public corruption in South Africa
assess South Africa's performance in attempting to reduce the scope of venal government. The rest of this essay will consider the effectiveness of South African initiatives with respect to these six activities: measurement, publicity, removing incentives, increasing penalties, political support, and bureaucratic reform.
PDF UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU-NATAL The impact of corruption in recruitment and
research institutions points to an ever-increasing concern about corruption in the South African government. In addition, further research conducted points to an increase in public sector corruption over the past 10 - 15 years. This research looks at challenges of corruption within recruitment and procurement units in the
(PDF) Why is corruption a challenge in South Africa and how it can be
is growing worldwide. According to Mubanqizi (2020), South African public and private sectors. are corrupted meaning that funds are diverted, perpetuating poverty inequality and unfairness ...