03 Dec 2018

 Vice President Mr Slumber Tsogwane has called on Africans to build a coherent anti-corruption regime made up of strong cultural systems of accountability and transparency to root out corruption, which hampers Africa’s growth.

Speaking during the closing ceremony of the 7^th African Union High Dialogue on Democracy, Human Rights and Governance in Africa: Trends, Challenges and Prospects on Friday, Mr Tsogwane said Africa’s growth had over the years been hampered by corruption, where lives have been lost, adding that there had been unprecedented level of suffering generation after generation.

Mr Tsogwane said Africa continued to lose trillions of money through corrupt practices. “This amount exceeds the amount that we borrow. The United Nations Development Programme observed that US$1 trillion was paid in bribes while an estimated US$2.6 trillion was stolen annually; a sum equivalent to five per cent of the global Gross Domestic Product. In developing countries, funds lost to corruption are estimated at times to the amount of the official development assistance,” he said.

Speaking to the theme: Winning the Fight Against Corruption: a Sustainable Path to Africa’s Transformation, Tsogwane said corruption remained the greatest impediment to economic growth, democracy and human rights, which significantly frustrated Africa’s efforts to grow its  economy. 

He advanced that Africans had become, at a great cost, peripheral consumers of their own produce, demoted to the lowest level of food chain despite abundant natural resources in the continent.

Mr Tsogwane further reiterated that Botswana had declared anti-corruption a national agenda and had heavily invested in it to set out standards for anti-corruption beyond the region, against which the world could learn from the desired knowledge based economy. 

He said Botswana had pledged to share her story with the hope that it would motivate global socio-economic development and contribute towards creating a sustainable path to transformation in Africa as all countries collectively implemented the AU Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption including other international conventions.

The 7^th AU High Dialogue on Democracy, Human Rights and Governance in Africa outcome statement highlighted that corruption in Africa was a socio-economic, political and moral cancer, which violated human rights. 

Emerging trends of corruption were identified as international crimes and threats to both national and regional security. 

This, the outcome statement said, required new and inclusive thinking, strategies, approaches and tools.

To alleviate these emerging trends may require development of new norms and redesign institutions to effectively tackle transnational and digital forms of corruption through inter- institutional and international collaborations.

The conference participants also highlighted that there was a shortage of credible and reliable data to enable African governments and citizens to fully appreciate the true cost of corruption and its impact on local, national and regional development.

In light of the aforementioned, the participants recommended universal ratification of the AU convention on preventing and combating corruption.

To deal with new and emerging threats, they called for review of existing normative frameworks to cater for new threats, redesigning and developing new institutions to tackle new threats by availing adequate resources to build technical no how of institutions.

The participants, who came from across the African continent further recommended state-citizen partnership to be strengthened in the fight against corruption to create an enabling environment to enhance citizen participation.

Further, they called for nurturing of Pan-African Partnership Against Corruption through strengthening of cooperation between and among financial intelligence units, supreme audit institutions, and African Tax Administration forum as well as develop continental data and resource portals.

For his part, Minister for Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration, Mr Nonofo Molefhi said a lot of resources were wasted on account of corruption thus he called on participants to continue to stoke the coal to keep the fire burning. 

He encouraged all symposium participants to spread the anti-corruption word. 

“This is not the end, the journey has started, you need sustained pace and stamina and focus in order to win the war against corruption,” he said. ENDS