CORRUPTION COSTS AFRICA $148BN A YEAR

What a powerful piece of writing and how apt and true it is. Corruption is everywhere - who amongst us haven't tried one way or another to make the problem go away! Whether it is having a speeding or traffic fine squashed or more.

Coompounding the problem is the fact that our erstwhile leaders have also jumped onto the bandwagen, albeit on a much grander scale.

We need to look at ourselves and into our own motives and one at a time, realize what we are doing to ourselves and our beautiful country.

Let's all make a concertive decision to stop the corruption, so that we can reap the rich rewards of what we seem so desperate to destroy!

Corruption costs Africa $148bn a year


Fran Blandy Johannesburg, South Africa


04 March 2007 10:16

"Corruption is everywhere -- in the villages, wherever", Zambia's Lands Minister Gladys Nyirango acknowledged at a major conference on graft in Africa last week. Hours later she was sacked. Africa has long had a reputation as the most corrupt continent, with only two countries, Botswana and Mauritius, making it into the top 50 of the latest annual Transparency International index on clean governance. But the crippling impact of graft on what is also the world's poorest continent is being increasingly recognised and some leaders are doing more than paying lip service to the problem.

Nyirango was axed by Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa while ironically attending an anti-corruption conference in Johannesburg. The conference was sponsored by the African Union and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca). Mwanawasa, whose war against corruption has even seen his one-time mentor and predecessor Frederick Chiluba put on trial, accused his one-time ally Nyirango of awarding her own family plots of land. Other senior figures on the continent who have found themselves on the wrong side of the law include Nigeria's Vice-President Atiku Abubakar who has also been indicted on corruption charges.

Jacob Zuma, former vice-president of the continent's economic powerhouse South Africa, lost his job in 2005 after his financial advisor was handed a jail sentence for corruption. According to a survey by the World Bank, corruption costs Africa $148-billion a year and increases the cost of goods by as much as 20%. "Corruption is a direct impediment to Africa's development. Corruption hurts the many and benefits the few," South Africa's Public Service Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi told delegates at the corruption conference. "It takes away resources from priority areas such as health, social development and education. It also hampers the continent's efforts to instill sound political, socio-economic and corporate governance."

A similar acknowledgement of the dangers of corruption can even be heard from Sudan, which ranks fifth from bottom of the Transparency International list, ahead of only Haiti, Burma, Iraq and Guinea. Public Service Minister Yusuf Mustapha said Sudan was trying to shed its reputation but said corruption had flourished both as a result of civil war and because of the abundance of natural resources in the vast East African nation. "We have all the evils that facilitate corruption. Factions in the civil war try to strengthen their positions and resort to corrupt ways of appropriation of resources. Now its a norm, a tradition," he told Agence France-Presse (AFP). "We also have newly discovered oil reserves, everybody is trying to take something from this discovered wealth."

There have been plenty of examples of African nations that have been apparently blessed with natural resources which have found them a curse. The Democratic Republic of Congo's vast reserves of minerals such as copper and cobalt helped suck in five other foreign armies into its recently-ended civil war while control of Sierra Leone's diamond mines was one of the main driving forces behind the West African country's conflict in the 1990s.In contrast, diamond-rich Botswana has not found its reserves an impediment to clean government and is the highest ranked African nation in the TI index. Tymon Katlholo, head of the Directorate in Corruption and Economic Crime, said that the key to Gabarone's successful track record was its decision to make an early start on the fight against corruption. Just after independence in 1966, the country adopted principles of sustainable development, consultation, democracy, social justice and economic development which permeated all national principles. "These principles are critical, it's all about the standards you set.

Poor standards in governance would certainly lead to corruption. Luckily we have been able to sustain them to date," he told AFP. Nyirango, the sacked Zambian minister, has a similar remedy for the ills of graft. "We need to create transparency, accountability and integrity. We want to be pro-active rather than reactive," she told AFP. - Sapa-AFP