Facing corruption as a global issue -Jul 14, 2005

By Christian Aid

As the pressure on aid, debt, trade and the United Nations’ global poverty-eradication goals continues beyond the G8 meeting last week towards the UN summit in September 2005, many are still asking: why should we write off Africa’s debt and commit more money in aid and trade if all Africa’s leaders do is steal it?

Christian Aid is concerned to address this issue honestly and squarely. But not in a way that detracts from the main issues or restricts the problem to Africa alone.

When tackling drugs crime, most British police forces know you have to target the dealer first and foremost. The user is as much victim as criminal. This holds true for corruption in Africa and elsewhere.

In the case of corruption, it’s the G8 nations and their rich northern neighbours who are the bribe pushers – and some African governments who are the users. It’s American, French and Russian companies that pay bribes to get a competitive advantage over their rivals. Yet their governments fail to prosecute them.

In a survey by Transparency International – the field leaders in anti-corruption – domestic companies in five G8 nations (Russia, Italy, Japan, the US and France) were seen as some of the worst bribe payers among the world’s industrialised countries.

In October 2003 the United Nations drew up the Convention Against Corruption to tackle these very problems. At least it would have done, had it been ratified.

But so far it has been backed by only 27 countries – 14 of them African. Not one G8 country has signed up.

When the colonial powers of Germany, Belgium, France, Britain and Portugal pulled out of Africa they left behind them a system of government based on elitism, patronage and power – fertile ground for the seeds of corruption.

New nations emerged blinking into the glorious light of new-found freedom and set about creating fledging democracies – not an easy task.

But when the world’s powerful countries don’t like your form of democracy it becomes all but impossible. Take Zaire, as one among many painfully typical African examples.

In 1960 the Belgians left Zaire and elections confirmed the Marxist Patrice Lumumba as prime minister. As factional fighting broke out, Lumumba turned to the Soviet Union for help.

So the US supported a coup by the pro-Western Mobuto, a man steeped in corruption.

But Mobuto was allowed to be as corrupt as he liked, as long as he supported America’s strategic interests. It’s a story that was repeated, in different forms, across the continent.

Africans are now saddled with paying back money we gave their governments to fight wars which left their countries poorer and in more need of aid than ever before

The end of the Cold War didn’t bring much respite. Now, the G8-dominated International Monetary Fund and the World Bank make loans on condition that poor countries cut back on public spending on healthcare and education.

Among institutions that faced the axe were schools which teach children to read and write – essential tools for the citizens in any democracy who want to hold leaders to account; the judiciary – necessary to hold the corrupt to account; and the police and civil servants, all of whom are needed to curtail corruption.

Those who keep their jobs are often paid less than subsistence wages – making them susceptible to bribery, should they wish to do anything as extravagant as feed their families.

Corruption is a worldwide phenomenon – not just an African one. Italy is considered more corrupt than Botswana, Greece outranks South Africa, Poland is worse than Ghana.

And remember the cash-for-questions scandal here in the UK and the mass resignation of corrupt members of European Commission in 2003? No one is immune.

If we wait until every African country is free of corruption we will condemn more children to death from poverty-related diseases, more adults will contract HIV and another generation will go uneducated in Africa.

It is not a matter of stopping aid to countries that are corrupt; it is a matter of giving aid for development to stop corruption.

Christian Aid, the international development agency supported by the British churches, has established the Pressureworks site to keep mobilising for trade justice, debt action and better aid in the light of the G8 summit.