Corruption is a global problem, which nearly every country on earth deals with in one way
or another.
The 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International is a valuable
tool for insights about what parts of the world suffer the most from bribery, embezzlement,
and other abuses of power.
In particular, one region that stands out is Africa, specifically the Sub-Saharan.
According to the Index, six of the ten most corrupt countries are in Africa, with Somalia
at the bottom of the list.
The worst affected countries are also some of the poorest in the world, and while corruption
helps a select few, it costs the continent billions.
One study shared by the United Nations estimates roughly $150 billion dollars is lost to corruption
every year, just in Africa alone.
So when we think about political structures in developing countries they tend to be very
weak they tend to be very centralized in the sense that there may be one charismatic person
driving the whole or big slice of politics in a developing country.
That’s Dr. Kweku Opoku-Agyemang a post-doctoral research fellow at the Blum Center for Developing
Economies at the University of California, Berkeley.
In one study, Dr. Opoku Ageymang looked at the effect of raising salaries for police
officers in order to curb bribery in West Africa.
If you spend any amount of time driving in West Africa, you often don’t go very far
before you are stopped at checkpoints and extorted by police officers and other government
officials.
Well, in 2010 the government of Ghana decided to raise the salaries of police officers.
So this provided a nice natural experiment for us to see whether higher salaries reduced
or worsened corruption.
By paying officers more money up front, officials hoped that not only would it mitigate their
need for petty bribery, but also increase the risk of losing that higher salary by being
fired for corruption.
The researchers expected corruption to fall, but the exact opposite ended up happening.
Police officers would stop drivers more often, and attempt to extort even more money than
before, an increase of roughly 25%.
A number of theories have been proposed to explain the seemingly contradictory results.
So perhaps different social reasons played a role in people extorting more money where
we would have expected less money.
Think about what you’re paid versus what you think you deserve.
If there is a difference between these two that difference would be what you would be
stealing.
Part of the reason it had a worse effect is that we uh think that for police officers
who are extorting the money, when they were better paid their sense of self-importance
was exaggerated.
While these issues were examined in Ghana, Dr. Opoku-Agyemang says they can be extrapolated
to include the rest of Africa, and so can some of the solutions.
One of the biggest efforts has been to increase education, both overall and about the prevalence
of corruption.
You may come to think that its normal its acceptable since it’s all that you know.
So one of the big um policies which have to be focused on has to do with raising awareness
and education in developing countries as well as providing the broader structures for policies
to work.
Another suggestion has been to implement more technological solutions, like people paying
for their transit fares through a mobile app, leaving no room for bribed cash transactions.
You know if you are dealing with a person it’s easier for the person to extort money
from you but if you are dealing with a machine that part is taken out of the discussion.
So there’s a big race to automate as much of government services in Africa as possible
to remove the middleman who may extort bribes.
While corruption continues to plague much of the developing world, many solutions have
been proposed, yet the problem has seen little improvement.
While Dr. Opoku-Agyemang’s observations and solutions are valid, they will likely
take a long time to implement, and an even longer time to take effect.
With something as institutionalized and historically accepted as bribery and corruption, change
will be slow and intermittent, with plenty to learn along the way
We want to take a moment to thank our partner the Blum Center for Developing Economies at
the University of California, Berkeley, an innovation and research hub that is tackling
issues in global poverty.
Make sure to check out some of their incredible work by visiting blumcenter.berkeley.edu.
Although corruption is an endemic problem in Africa, that’s not the only part of the
world struggling.
To learn more about what drives corruption, and which countries are suffering the most,
check out this video.
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