The notions of “mismanagement of public resources” and “corruption” are very closely associated.  The first relates to incompetence by those responsible for custody over assets that belong to the state.  The second relates to criminal activity by those who should be in custody for misusing assets that belong to the state.  I am concerned by both but approach the first with some degree of patience in the belief that better rewards, training and education can increase levels of proficiency amongst public servants.  The second makes me, and millions of right-thinking Africans, angry at the barefaced theft that corrupt officials feel is their right to carry out.  I am furious at the direct loss to the African people that their crooked larceny causes.

Mismanagement of public resources negatively impacts the state’s ability to provide better public services such as education, public transport, healthcare, sanitation and security to its citizens.  And it is true that many African countries in any case face challenges in managing their financial resources effectively.  Some governments are unable to mobilise adequate revenue for the execution of their budgets and so salaries of public servants remain low.  This has the consequence that public service does not always attract the best applicants.  But ensuring a good quality of public employee is not only a question of remuneration but also requires adequate levels of training and education among civil servants.

Some of the areas in which training and education are required, so as to ensure that public servants can do their job properly, include tax administration where issues of organisational structure and efficiency in tax offices should be addressed.  It is a basic requirement that the tax authorities should be able to respond to the needs of the individual taxpayer – for he or she, at the end of the day, is funding the whole operation.  Basic respect for taxpayers demands a minimum standard of service in terms of handling information requests and speed of response.  But at the outset, it must be recognised that public contributions to the treasury, through the various taxes that the state is happy to impose, should be valued and accounted for through good management practice. This in turn will ensure the provision of efficient public services by the state. The absence of competence among those charged with managing public resources is often compounded by shortcomings in transparency and accountability.  An efficient system of formally auditing public records is indispensable as a means of reducing the mismanagement of public resources.  Such discipline strengthens institutional capacity right across government.  When such an auditing system works in tandem with specialised government finance and public accounts committees then the overall capacity of government institutions to fulfil effectively their constitutional roles is increased.

I believe that the improvement of management processes results in higher levels of technical expertise, better professional networks and general improvement through peer learning among public employees.  All of which result in reductions of mismanagement of public resources.  The question of mismanagement then is something that governments can turn their attention to, should they really be determined to resolve the issue.  So too with corruption.

The definition of corruption used by Transparency International, the leading anti-corruption NGO, sees it as: “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain”.  And this definition opens several areas for consideration.  From a legal point of view, it may not always be clear what constitutes an ‘abuse’ of power and, then again, any ‘private gain’ may be difficult to prove.  But the simplicity of this definition is actually its strength – because the African people know (without any legal training whatsoever) what in this context constitutes ‘abuse of power’ and ‘private gain’.

This having been said, the incidence of corruption in African countries ranges from rare (e.g. Botswana) to widespread (e.g. Ghana) to systemic (e.g. Nigeria).  It is probably not unfair to claim that most states fall in the ‘widespread to systemic’ category.  It is as if, in many countries, people have come to accept corruption with a shrug of the shoulders and to consider it as a way of doing business.  So how might governments go about cleaning up corrupt practices in their own back yard when these are often so ingrained in the way the country is run that people have come to see corruption as normal?

Clearly, democratically elected African governments have policies to reduce and eliminate corruption – it is not that we are necessarily dealing with criminal organisations masquerading as nation states, although there have been cases of such.  But the political elites in a democracy are in a key position in the fight against corruption.  It is they who are ultimately responsible for designing the overall anti-corruption strategy, and their own behaviour and integrity also represent a role model for subordinate politicians, civil servants and the population. However, we have come to doubt their determination and resolve in this regard.  The experience of many African countries has shown that simply creating anti-corruption laws or agencies is only a first step in the fight against this malady.  Very often these first, small steps are not guaranteed to have any impact on the level of corruption at all.  At best, new anti-corruption laws are not properly enforced and their parallel institutions not properly staffed or funded.  At worst, the anti-corruption

efforts are undertaken merely to appease public opinion or international donors and thereby to add legitimacy to kleptocratic regimes.

So to get an effective anti-corruption policy in place, governments must break down their strategy into several segments.  Firstly, they must formulate effective anti-corruption legislation as a basis for the fight to come.  In parallel, an enforcement approach must be put in place which may require administrative reforms such as general decentralisation of decision making and civil service restructuring.  These facilitate the application of the new laws by simplifying management processes and so reducing the opportunities for corruption.  Parallel economic reforms designed to reduce the participation of government in the countries’ economic activity can also be helpful.  These might include the elimination of government monopolies and other economic distortions, such as price controls or exchange rate restrictions.

All these changes should be designed to reduce the number of significant occasions when corruption might take place by streamlining the processes of government.  Where space for corrupt practices does not exist then corruption itself will the strangled at its source.  Such fundamental changes actually constitute important building blocks in any overall anti-corruption strategy. 

I have mentioned the importance of audit as a tool of enforcement regarding cases of mismanagement.  But auditing systems are equally important in the fight against corruption.  In conjunction with efficient government auditing, specialised anti-corruption organisations can also be made responsible for prevention, detection and prosecution of corruption.  They might, as a question of organisation, also undertake overall coordination of the anti-corruption strategy in conjunction with the auditing agency.

Civil society was at the forefront of the democratization process in the early 1990s.  In Ghana, Kenya and Togo, middle class associations of lawyers, university professors and students were highly active in the pursuit of democratization.  In Nigeria and Zambia, Christian groups have actively fought authoritarianism and supported democratization in their countries.  Civil society also has a role to play in the elimination of corruption.  In this it may be supported by the media as they together reinforce citizens’ perception of corruption as a cancer in society.  Once wider, societal perceptions of corruption are changed so pressure is brought to bear on politicians to do something effective about it. However, even when a government’s strategy is in place, it is frequently the case that the energy of the anti-corruption campaign decreases as time goes on.  The effect often follows the longevity of a government – the longer the government is in office, the weaker its anti-corruption activities.  Newly elected governments often begin their anti-corruption activities with great gusto – only to lose

momentum as their period in office lengthens.  This is perhaps because their incentive to find the faults of their predecessors is replaced by an incentive to cover up their own short comings.

It is also noticeable that as a government’s period in office continues so the strength of corrupt vested interests grows.  At the time of a change of government, these interests lose some influence (and maybe some income) but they seem to soon build this back as the new incumbents of government frequently succumb to the temptations of corruption that are dangled front of them.  Never has there been a stronger case made for government to be in the hands of independently wealthy and therefore incorruptible leaders.

There are economic explanations too for the weakening of government anti-corruption strategy later on in a period in office.  The frequently met poverty across our continent and the generally low level of public sector wages in most African countries both contribute to the ineffectiveness of the fight against corruption.  Poverty increases the attractiveness of short-term material inducements for people.  If the alternative to corrupt behaviour is starvation for one’s family then it is perhaps unsurprising that people prefer the corrupt option.  The same effect is caused by the general erosion of public sector salaries in Africa.  Never has there been a stronger case made for the reduction of poverty across the continent and for improving the efficiency and salaries of public servants.

But our societies, we ourselves, must also reflect on our role in the fight against corruption.  As our continent has been transformed through periods of colonialism, autocracy and burgeoning democracy so we have chosen to adopt may western standards of behaviour – at least nominally.  Our nation states claim that integrity, impartiality and a commitment to the common public good are fundamental to the functioning of their institutions.  But these concepts are perhaps differently understood in traditional African society.  Often, our cultures do not differentiate between a leader as a private individual and his public role.  As a consequence, it becomes hard to distinguish between income streams that in one culture might be legitimate but which would be identified as embezzlement in another.  This problem makes anti-corruption laws difficult to enforce until people understand how ineffective anti-corruption laws impoverishes all of us – whilst enriching only the corrupt.  Never has there been a stronger case made for eliminating public tolerance of corruption and for a championing a transparent state.