Corruption is widespread in Africa, firstly, for the dictatorial regimes ruling nearly everywhere, the ideal conditions for corruption.
The absence of control by parliaments, public opinion and press allows presidents and generals and their gangs of followers to create personal monopoles and dirty businesses in all economic activities and services and ask illegally money to their citizens or also to foreigners travellers for providing services of public utility, licences, authorizations, dicuments or simply a visa to get into the Country.

Corruption create great, immense richnesses in few local persons while the rest of people suffers of all the plagues we all know for Africa. So, they send their richnesses abroad in Western banks or in financial paradises to keep safe their robberies.
Then, the lack of democracy and the excess of power of the leaders ties the hands to magistrates and free press preventing them to inform people about corruption of their leaders.
Of course, local people knows well the extent of corruption, suffering them on their own skin, but a free press and magistrature would allow to reduce this plague.

Corruption is also widely practiced by foreign multinational companies and government to give "gifts" to African leaders to get licences to exploit local resources (ores, gems, oil, agricolture products) paying very little to local workers employed, exploiting them, polluting rivers, soils and seas without any control from the government.

Corruption becomes a governnment system and produces violence to defend it against the attempts to restore laws and morality and against other local tribal clans trying to grab part of the "great cake".
Also for this, many civil wars had blasted in some African Countries.

When I write this, I absolutely don't want to talk "ex cathedra", as an European citizen, living in a land where such things don't happen.
In my Country, Italy (and not only) corruption is the same very diffused at every level and we cannot give lessons of public morality to nobody in the world.
Corruption, infact, is a worm eating a Country from its inside, also when it's a democracy, if there's not sufficient organization, severe laws and clear responsabilities.

Learn more about this author, Aldo Bonincontro.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

---

Add your voice

Know something about Why we hear so often about corruption in Africa?
We want to hear your view. Write now!