The communiqué issued by the G8 countries following the 2005 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, stated, “There are now just ten years...to meet the goals agreed at the Millennium Summit in 2000. We should continue the G8 focus on Africa which is the only continent not on track to meet any of the goals of the Millennium Declaration by 2015.”
Many of the commitments have been reneged on or only partly met. The Guardian ran a report of the recent meeting of the so-called sherpas in Berlin—G8 officials who meet to prepare the summit proper. According to the 16 May Guardian article, British delegates who raised the question of aid budgets were met with little sympathy. The report quotes a Russian sherpa saying, “We only made those promises because we felt sorry for Tony Blair after the terrorist attacks on 7/7.” This was a reference to the bombings of a bus and tube trains in London, which had happened the previous day.
Bono has called for an emergency session to be held at the G8 summit to address the failure to meet the aid pledges. Speaking to the Guardian, he said, “It’s not just the credibility of the G8 that’s at stake. It’s the credibility of the largest non-violent protest in 30 years. Nobody wants to go back to what we saw in Genoa, but I do sense a real sense of jeopardy.”
Several reports recently published show the extent of the shortfall. One report is from the organisation established by Bono and Geldof, Debt AIDS Trade Africa, or DATA. The report’s aim is to put pressure on the G8. It states, “We hope that its findings will be taken to heart by Chancellor Merkel (of Germany) when she chairs the crucial session on Africa at the forthcoming G8 Summit in Heiligendamm.”
The DATA report monitors how the G8 countries are falling short of the commitments it promised to deliver—$25 billion a year in development aid by 2010. It notes:
“Collectively, the G8 are badly off track with their development assistance promise to Africa. In total G8 assistance to sub-Saharan Africa has increased by only $2.3 billion since 2004, when it should have increased by $5.4 billion over that period.... Concern is heightened by the small increases in aid that are in the pipeline for many G8 countries for 2007 and 2008. If G8 does not react quickly to get back on track with the needed scale-ups in assistance, the early successes...will be squandered....”
Regarding trade it adds, “the lack of global agreement and failure to focus on Africa mean that we can report no genuine progress...we must hold all G8 members accountable for this collective failing.”
A report issued by CONCORD, an umbrella organisation representing development NGOs based in Europe, analyses the aid programmes of European Union nations. The report is entitled “Hold the Applause.”
It states that the amounts promised by European governments do not match the amounts actually paid: “If European governments do not improve on current performance, poor countries will have received 50 billion Euros less from Europe by 2010 than...promised.” It accuses European government aid programmes of having “security, geopolitical alliances and domestic interests” as the main objectives.
The analysis shows 30 percent of the figure for aid claimed by European governments was not genuine aid. Amongst the methods used to inflate the aid figures is the inclusion of debt relief as aid. Another is to count cancellation of export credit debts as aid relief. As the report points out, export credits are used to support domestic companies seeking to do business in developing countries offering insurance against often very lucrative, if somewhat risky, ventures.
Another means of inflating aid figures is to include monies spent on refugees within Europe and money spent on educating overseas students within Europe. The report cites Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) figures showing the percentage of European aid going to Africa is actually falling. For 2004 it was 41 percent, and in 2005 it was 37 percent.
CONCORD also makes the point that “tied food aid is often linked to trade dumping of surplus food from donor countries.” A recent article in the Observer newspaper food magazine accused the American government of doing the same thing. It noted, “America’s food aid volumes increased massively (up to 20 percent of cereal production)...when prices in the US were depressed...but when domestic prices are high this figure falls to just five per cent.”
A report by the development charity Oxfam is headlined, “The World is Still Waiting. Broken G8 promises are costing millions of lives.”
The report notes that two years since the Gleneagles G8 summit, “the unacceptable truth is that they are breaking their promises, with terrible consequences.” Oxfam calculates that shortfall in money promised equates to 1 million women dying in pregnancy or childbirth for the want of simple medical care and 21 million children under five dying because of extreme poverty.
Writing in the Scotsman in April, Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, New York, said, “The first year after the Gleneagles meeting, aid numbers were padded by misleading accounting on debt cancellation.... The data are now revealing the stark truth: development aid to Africa and to poor countries more generally is stagnant....”
Much was made of the debt cancellations announced at the 2005 G8 summit, and yet according to the Jubilee Debt Campaign using the latest information available, “The poorest 54 countries have debts totaling between US$300 and US$400 billion, whilst for the poorest 152 countries, it is over US$ 2.5 trillion.”
They add, “The total external debt of the very poorest countries (the ‘low income countries’ which have an annual average income of less than $875 per person) was US$412 billion at the end of 2005. During 2005, these countries paid nearly $43 billion to the rich world in debt service (payments of interest and principal)—that is $118 million a day.”
The run up to the conference has seen the usual “generous” gestures. Bush has announced an extra $30 billion to fight HIV/Aids. Bush set up the President’s Emergency Programme for Aids Relief (Pepfar) in 2003 with a budget of $15 billion over five years. It is due to end in September. The new money will be allocated over the next five years. However, as a Guardian news article of May 31 noted, “Although Mr. Bush announced the $30 billion, he has to ask Congress to find the money. With Iraq costing billions it will be hard for Congress to find the sum in an already over-stretched US budget.”
Also, by US law, at least a third of the spending must go to Christian organisations promoting abstinence and opposing the use of condoms. Dr. John Santelli from the public health school at the University of Columbia explained: “You can’t run a good programme if you are sending mixed messages. You advocated abstinence in one place and distribute condoms at a clinic nearby, and the US is funding both.”
Aditi Sharma, head of campaigns for Action Aid, the international anti-poverty agency, commented: “People living with HIV are tired of piecemeal promises and will accept nothing short of a long-term funding plan providing significant additional and predictable finances to achieve the goal of universal access to prevention, treatment and care by 2010.”
A recent Action Aid report noted that the G8 countries would need to treble amounts donated to AIDS treatment/prevention to achieve this goal. Sharma noted, “Even with [Bush’s] announcement, the US will fall short of its share.”
An open letter organised by the Universal Access Aids campaign, on behalf of more than 250 HIV relief and related organisations, has been sent to the G8 leaders. In it they note, “UNAIDS estimates that the global AIDS response needs $20-30 billion per annum, but on current commitments we are $8 billion short in 2007 and $10 billion short from 2008-2010.”
With Germany the current chair of the G8, Angela Merkel was under pressure to make some pronouncement. She has promised to increase development aid by 750 million euros a year over the next four years. Max Lawson of Oxfam said this was “not enough.” To reach Germany’s target of spending 0.51 percent of GDP on aid, its increase would need to be nearly double the proposed amount.
In April, the Africa Progress Panel (APP) was established. Amongst its leading personnel are Kofi Annan, former head of the United Nations, Michael Camdessus, former managing director of the International Monetary Fund and Bob Geldof. In a recent statement, it noted only 10 percent of the pledges made at the Gleneagles G8 summit had been fulfilled. Annan met with Merkel at the end of April. After the meeting, she commented, “We are going to take things up where Gleneagles ended...we don’t need to have more conferences and set more goals.”
The fact that G8 countries have fallen so far behind pledges of aid highlights the fraudulent character of their concern for poverty in Africa. The G8 countries do have a renewed interest in Africa, but what is developing is a new scramble for Africa’s resources. America has recently reorganised its military command structure in line with its growing strategic and resource interests in that continent. It is becoming increasingly dependent on African oil to meet its needs. The G8 finance ministers recently met in Germany ahead of the summit. A BBC News report noted, “Germany singled out China, which relies on access to raw materials to feed its fast-growing economy, as one of the biggest risks to mineral-rich Africa.”
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
corruption survey
Surveys (estimating the scale of corruption in Africa)
Those surveys frequently used in the context of corruption are household surveys and surveys of different parts of the community, such as businessmen and public officials. They usually aim at drawing attention to the existence and scale of corruption in an institution, or indeed a state. Examples of surveys of the cost and extent of corruption in Africa or African states include:
1.1. Regional Surveys
The World Bank Governance Indicators 1996-2002 consider the perception of corruption under the heading "control of corruption". Of those African countries included in the survey, only Botswana is positioned in the "best quartile", which indicates that a mere 25% of all 190 countries rate the same or better. By contrast, 27 countries score between 25 and 75%, and 23 countries achieve a percentile rank of below 25 (with Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria scoring below 5), which indicates that 75% of all 190 countries are perceived to be less corrupt.
Transparency International's 2003 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is a league table of nations that are ranked according to their perceived level of corruption. As indicated by its title, the CPI measures the perception, not necessarily the reality of corruption in a country. These perceptions reflect the confidence investors and investment rating agencies have in a country. The CPI is a composite index, that is, an index made up of a number of independent surveys. For a country to be included in the CPI, a minimum of three surveys must be available. [For more information on the CPI, previous indices and a background paper on methodology, please refer to web site.]The 2003 index places the majority of African countries in the bottom half of the 133 countries included in the index. Indeed, on a scale ranging from one (high levels of corruption) to ten (low levels of corruption), only Botswana scores more than five points (5.7), followed by Tunisia (4.9) and Namibia (4.7). Bottom of the list come Kenya (1.9), Angola and Cameroon (1.8), and Nigeria (1.4).
The Southern African Democracy Barometer finds that "perceptions of official corruption are fairly extensive across the region [Southern Africa - Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho, Namibia]" and concludes that even though these perceptions may not be accurate, they nevertheless constitute an important political challenge. The results of its survey show that over half of all Zimbabweans considered "all/almost all or most" officials to be corrupt (with an average score of 3.2 on a scale from 1 to 4, where 4 reflects the belief that all officials are corrupt), while almost half of the Zambians questioned ranked the corruption of their officials at 2.9 out of 4 points. Even Namibian citizens, whose view of the level of corruptness of their officials was the most positive of all countries queried, scored an average 2.2 on a scale of 4.
Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer 2002, a survey of attitudes, expectations and priorities on corruption in over 40 countries, covered three African countries, namely Cameroon, Nigeria and South Africa. Asked how they believed corruption affected their personal and family life, 57.4% of South Africans, 50.6% of Nigerians and 47.5 % of Cameroonians considered it to be very significant. 70.8% of Cameroonians, 68.1% of South Africans and 60.3% of Nigerians perceived corruption to affect the business environment very significantly, and 71.2% of Cameroonians, 65.8% of Nigerians and 65.4% of South Africans considered this to be true also for political life. 39.4% of Cameroonians expected corruption to increase a lot over the next three years, as did 36.1% of South Africans and 27.1% of Nigerians. Asked which institution they would choose for eliminating corruption, 31% of Cameroonians opted for the courts, and 32.1% of Nigerians and 23.8% of South Africans for the Police.
1.2. National Surveys
Ghana: The Centre for Democracy and Development's 2000 Governance and Corruption Survey shows that approximately 75% of households see corruption as a serious problem in Ghana, with a majority (66%) paying 10% of their incomes (within the c 1-5 million income bracket) in bribes to public officials. 44% of firms admit to making unofficial payments to public officials, with 27% frequently or always making such payments.
Kenya: Transparency International-Kenya's Urban Bribery Index of 2001 presents preliminary analysis of a study by TI-Kenya on the magnitude of bribery in Kenya. Based on a survey in which ordinary Kenyans report their daily encounters with corruption - who they bribe, for how much and for what, the study goes beyond perceptions of corruption to provide benchmarks of integrity based on the actual incidence of corruption. It was conducted in March & April 2001 in Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Eldoret, Nyeri and Machakos and responded to by 1164 individuals.According to the survey, 67% of the respondents' interaction with public institutions involved bribes or negative consequences if the bribe payment was declined. It was estimated that "the average urban Kenyan pays 16 bribes to both public and private institutions in a month. Public servants […receive] by far the most bribes, accounting for 99% of the bribery transactions, and 97% of the value". This amounts to a cost of just under Ksh 8,000 a month per respondent (compared to an average income of Ksh. 26,000 per month per respondent).
Madagascar: Transparency International's Chapter in Madagascar conducted a survey in 2001 in order to identify the nature, scope and frequency of corruption on the basis of perceptions and experiences shared by the business community in the provinces of Antananarivo, Tamatave and Toliary. The results showed that among others 75% of businesses "always" experienced corruption in the public works sector and in courts, while 30% of the informal sector claimed to always experience corruption in their interaction with public services. Depending on the public agency and the economic status of the firm, bribe payments worth up to 100 million Fmg were made by the formal sector, and 5 million Fmg by the informal sector. Customs and traffic police were perceived to be very corrupt by over 90% of formal businesses, and 93% of informal sector respondents perceived the traffic police to be very corrupt as well, followed by those civil servants in charge of registrations and licenses (86%).
Morocco: Transparency Maroc's Enquête Nationale d'Integrité, a national integrity survey conducted among private sector representatives in 2001, shows that in the area of procurement, 22% of respondents believe corruption to be an integral part of the process, while 37% think it is often required. Those indicating a knowledge of corruption in procurement claim that 33% of the corrupt payments made to obtain public contracts are in excess of 10% of the contract's value. The traffic police was perceived to be corrupt by 62% of the respondents, followed by customs officials at 44%, while 42% perceive corruption in politics as occurring always, and 38% as often. However, the survey also showed that firms were less likely to actually bribe (or to admit to bribery) than these figures suggest.
South Africa: The Country Corruption Assessment Report 2003 intends to give a comprehensive picture of the nature and extent of corruption in South Africa. To this end, three surveys on perceptions and experiences of corruption were conducted among households, businesses and the public services and its clients. The results showed 80% of South Africans perceiving corruption to be prevalent, with 41% considering it one of the most important problems to be addressed. 62% of respondents from the private sector perceived corruption to be a serious problem, and public service clients believed between15-30% of public officials to be corrupt. Some public service managers held the view that up to 75% of their own staff were corrupt. These negative views of the scale of corruption were however not matched by the (substantially lower) amount of South Africans actually experiencing corruption.
Tanzania: CIETinternational's Service Delivery Survey of 1996 points to a general perception of corruption in the four services - the police, the judiciary, revenue and lands services - included in the survey. The results from the household survey indicated that 60% of respondents thought there was "very much" corruption in their respective district, with 39% reporting corruption in revenue services, 35% in the police, 32% in the judiciary and 25% in land services. A questionnaire distributed among service workers showed that 57% of respondents thought there was "very much" corruption in public services in Tanzania.
Uganda: Uganda Enterprise Survey 1999 was conducted by the World Bank and the Ugandan Private Sector Foundation among firms to collect data on constraints facing private enterprises in Uganda. Of the 176 firms answering the questions related to corruption, 81% reported to have been involved in bribe-paying. They reported spending an average of 7.9% of their total costs in corrupt payments, compared to 6.3% for fuel and 6.8% for interest. Of the 167 firms supplying data on both bribe payments and taxes, 70% reported higher bribe payments than corporate income taxes. Those firms not paying bribes operated in sectors with little or no contact with the public sector.
Even though methodology and types of respondents vary, these surveys clearly indicate that corruption is perceived to be widespread, both at the national and at the regional level.
[top]
Part 2
2. Estimates of the cost of corruption to Africa
Estimates of the cost of corruption in monetary terms - or percentages thereof - are useful to illustrate the seriousness of the case, but should be handled with care, since corruption - as mentioned before - cannot be measured with certainty. Furthermore, the cost of corruption comprises not just of the sums of money lost but also of retarded development and increased inequalities - which are far less easy to quantify.
National Economy: A report by the African Union, presented before a meeting in Addis Ababa in September 2002, estimates that corruption costs African economies in excess of 148bn dollars a year. This figure, which includes both direct and indirect costs of corruption, i.e. resources diverted by corrupt acts and resources withheld or deterred due to the existence of corruption, is thought to represent 25% of Africa's GDP and to increase the cost of goods by as much as 20%. [BBC News, 18/09/02; The Economist, 19/09/02]
Aid effectiveness: In 1996, it was estimated that up to 30bn dollars in aid for Africa ended up in foreign bank accounts, an amount equal to twice the annual GDP of Ghana, Kenya and Uganda [from Michelle Celarier, 1996: The Cost of Corruption. In: Euromoney, September 1996: 49.] See also this article on the Asian Development Bank web site.
Revenue collection: Research findings by the African Development Bank indicate that corruption leads to a loss of approximately 50% of tax revenue, which in some instances is a greater amount than a country's total foreign debt. [Gabriel Negatu, African Development Bank (by email)]
Household expenditure: The African Development Bank estimates that lower income households spend an average 2-3% of their income on bribes, while rich households spend an average of 0.9% of their income.
These figures and results illustrate that corruption in Africa is perceived to be both widespread and costly, by diverting assets away from their intended use. While this result does probably not come as a surprise, it may be worth pointing out that although some African countries are perceived to be extremely corrupt, others, such as Botswana, Tunisia, South Africa, Mauritius and Namibia do not fare badly in international comparisons.
Those surveys frequently used in the context of corruption are household surveys and surveys of different parts of the community, such as businessmen and public officials. They usually aim at drawing attention to the existence and scale of corruption in an institution, or indeed a state. Examples of surveys of the cost and extent of corruption in Africa or African states include:
1.1. Regional Surveys
The World Bank Governance Indicators 1996-2002 consider the perception of corruption under the heading "control of corruption". Of those African countries included in the survey, only Botswana is positioned in the "best quartile", which indicates that a mere 25% of all 190 countries rate the same or better. By contrast, 27 countries score between 25 and 75%, and 23 countries achieve a percentile rank of below 25 (with Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria scoring below 5), which indicates that 75% of all 190 countries are perceived to be less corrupt.
Transparency International's 2003 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is a league table of nations that are ranked according to their perceived level of corruption. As indicated by its title, the CPI measures the perception, not necessarily the reality of corruption in a country. These perceptions reflect the confidence investors and investment rating agencies have in a country. The CPI is a composite index, that is, an index made up of a number of independent surveys. For a country to be included in the CPI, a minimum of three surveys must be available. [For more information on the CPI, previous indices and a background paper on methodology, please refer to web site.]The 2003 index places the majority of African countries in the bottom half of the 133 countries included in the index. Indeed, on a scale ranging from one (high levels of corruption) to ten (low levels of corruption), only Botswana scores more than five points (5.7), followed by Tunisia (4.9) and Namibia (4.7). Bottom of the list come Kenya (1.9), Angola and Cameroon (1.8), and Nigeria (1.4).
The Southern African Democracy Barometer finds that "perceptions of official corruption are fairly extensive across the region [Southern Africa - Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho, Namibia]" and concludes that even though these perceptions may not be accurate, they nevertheless constitute an important political challenge. The results of its survey show that over half of all Zimbabweans considered "all/almost all or most" officials to be corrupt (with an average score of 3.2 on a scale from 1 to 4, where 4 reflects the belief that all officials are corrupt), while almost half of the Zambians questioned ranked the corruption of their officials at 2.9 out of 4 points. Even Namibian citizens, whose view of the level of corruptness of their officials was the most positive of all countries queried, scored an average 2.2 on a scale of 4.
Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer 2002, a survey of attitudes, expectations and priorities on corruption in over 40 countries, covered three African countries, namely Cameroon, Nigeria and South Africa. Asked how they believed corruption affected their personal and family life, 57.4% of South Africans, 50.6% of Nigerians and 47.5 % of Cameroonians considered it to be very significant. 70.8% of Cameroonians, 68.1% of South Africans and 60.3% of Nigerians perceived corruption to affect the business environment very significantly, and 71.2% of Cameroonians, 65.8% of Nigerians and 65.4% of South Africans considered this to be true also for political life. 39.4% of Cameroonians expected corruption to increase a lot over the next three years, as did 36.1% of South Africans and 27.1% of Nigerians. Asked which institution they would choose for eliminating corruption, 31% of Cameroonians opted for the courts, and 32.1% of Nigerians and 23.8% of South Africans for the Police.
1.2. National Surveys
Ghana: The Centre for Democracy and Development's 2000 Governance and Corruption Survey shows that approximately 75% of households see corruption as a serious problem in Ghana, with a majority (66%) paying 10% of their incomes (within the c 1-5 million income bracket) in bribes to public officials. 44% of firms admit to making unofficial payments to public officials, with 27% frequently or always making such payments.
Kenya: Transparency International-Kenya's Urban Bribery Index of 2001 presents preliminary analysis of a study by TI-Kenya on the magnitude of bribery in Kenya. Based on a survey in which ordinary Kenyans report their daily encounters with corruption - who they bribe, for how much and for what, the study goes beyond perceptions of corruption to provide benchmarks of integrity based on the actual incidence of corruption. It was conducted in March & April 2001 in Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Eldoret, Nyeri and Machakos and responded to by 1164 individuals.According to the survey, 67% of the respondents' interaction with public institutions involved bribes or negative consequences if the bribe payment was declined. It was estimated that "the average urban Kenyan pays 16 bribes to both public and private institutions in a month. Public servants […receive] by far the most bribes, accounting for 99% of the bribery transactions, and 97% of the value". This amounts to a cost of just under Ksh 8,000 a month per respondent (compared to an average income of Ksh. 26,000 per month per respondent).
Madagascar: Transparency International's Chapter in Madagascar conducted a survey in 2001 in order to identify the nature, scope and frequency of corruption on the basis of perceptions and experiences shared by the business community in the provinces of Antananarivo, Tamatave and Toliary. The results showed that among others 75% of businesses "always" experienced corruption in the public works sector and in courts, while 30% of the informal sector claimed to always experience corruption in their interaction with public services. Depending on the public agency and the economic status of the firm, bribe payments worth up to 100 million Fmg were made by the formal sector, and 5 million Fmg by the informal sector. Customs and traffic police were perceived to be very corrupt by over 90% of formal businesses, and 93% of informal sector respondents perceived the traffic police to be very corrupt as well, followed by those civil servants in charge of registrations and licenses (86%).
Morocco: Transparency Maroc's Enquête Nationale d'Integrité, a national integrity survey conducted among private sector representatives in 2001, shows that in the area of procurement, 22% of respondents believe corruption to be an integral part of the process, while 37% think it is often required. Those indicating a knowledge of corruption in procurement claim that 33% of the corrupt payments made to obtain public contracts are in excess of 10% of the contract's value. The traffic police was perceived to be corrupt by 62% of the respondents, followed by customs officials at 44%, while 42% perceive corruption in politics as occurring always, and 38% as often. However, the survey also showed that firms were less likely to actually bribe (or to admit to bribery) than these figures suggest.
South Africa: The Country Corruption Assessment Report 2003 intends to give a comprehensive picture of the nature and extent of corruption in South Africa. To this end, three surveys on perceptions and experiences of corruption were conducted among households, businesses and the public services and its clients. The results showed 80% of South Africans perceiving corruption to be prevalent, with 41% considering it one of the most important problems to be addressed. 62% of respondents from the private sector perceived corruption to be a serious problem, and public service clients believed between15-30% of public officials to be corrupt. Some public service managers held the view that up to 75% of their own staff were corrupt. These negative views of the scale of corruption were however not matched by the (substantially lower) amount of South Africans actually experiencing corruption.
Tanzania: CIETinternational's Service Delivery Survey of 1996 points to a general perception of corruption in the four services - the police, the judiciary, revenue and lands services - included in the survey. The results from the household survey indicated that 60% of respondents thought there was "very much" corruption in their respective district, with 39% reporting corruption in revenue services, 35% in the police, 32% in the judiciary and 25% in land services. A questionnaire distributed among service workers showed that 57% of respondents thought there was "very much" corruption in public services in Tanzania.
Uganda: Uganda Enterprise Survey 1999 was conducted by the World Bank and the Ugandan Private Sector Foundation among firms to collect data on constraints facing private enterprises in Uganda. Of the 176 firms answering the questions related to corruption, 81% reported to have been involved in bribe-paying. They reported spending an average of 7.9% of their total costs in corrupt payments, compared to 6.3% for fuel and 6.8% for interest. Of the 167 firms supplying data on both bribe payments and taxes, 70% reported higher bribe payments than corporate income taxes. Those firms not paying bribes operated in sectors with little or no contact with the public sector.
Even though methodology and types of respondents vary, these surveys clearly indicate that corruption is perceived to be widespread, both at the national and at the regional level.
[top]
Part 2
2. Estimates of the cost of corruption to Africa
Estimates of the cost of corruption in monetary terms - or percentages thereof - are useful to illustrate the seriousness of the case, but should be handled with care, since corruption - as mentioned before - cannot be measured with certainty. Furthermore, the cost of corruption comprises not just of the sums of money lost but also of retarded development and increased inequalities - which are far less easy to quantify.
National Economy: A report by the African Union, presented before a meeting in Addis Ababa in September 2002, estimates that corruption costs African economies in excess of 148bn dollars a year. This figure, which includes both direct and indirect costs of corruption, i.e. resources diverted by corrupt acts and resources withheld or deterred due to the existence of corruption, is thought to represent 25% of Africa's GDP and to increase the cost of goods by as much as 20%. [BBC News, 18/09/02; The Economist, 19/09/02]
Aid effectiveness: In 1996, it was estimated that up to 30bn dollars in aid for Africa ended up in foreign bank accounts, an amount equal to twice the annual GDP of Ghana, Kenya and Uganda [from Michelle Celarier, 1996: The Cost of Corruption. In: Euromoney, September 1996: 49.] See also this article on the Asian Development Bank web site.
Revenue collection: Research findings by the African Development Bank indicate that corruption leads to a loss of approximately 50% of tax revenue, which in some instances is a greater amount than a country's total foreign debt. [Gabriel Negatu, African Development Bank (by email)]
Household expenditure: The African Development Bank estimates that lower income households spend an average 2-3% of their income on bribes, while rich households spend an average of 0.9% of their income.
These figures and results illustrate that corruption in Africa is perceived to be both widespread and costly, by diverting assets away from their intended use. While this result does probably not come as a surprise, it may be worth pointing out that although some African countries are perceived to be extremely corrupt, others, such as Botswana, Tunisia, South Africa, Mauritius and Namibia do not fare badly in international comparisons.
African child
Day of the African Child is a day recognized throughout the world on June 16th as an opportunity to reflect on progress toward health, education, equality and protection for all the continent’s children. The theme of this year's Day is child trafficking. Trafficking refers to the illegal transport of human beings, in particular women and children, for the purpose of selling them or exploiting their labor. Trafficking of children is one of the most severe violations of human rights in the world today, involving over a million children worldwide. This month, communities around the world are organizing to raise awareness about child trafficking. One of the most effective means of preventing trafficking is to provide youth with opportunities to receive quality education. The more youth (and adults) know about their rights, the better equipped they are to fight violations of these rights. Below are some simple ways you can take action and help youth around the world secure their rights.
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