Executive summary

Effective economic governance institutions are essential, not only for combating corruption, but also for structural transformation and inclusive development in Africa. The current predominantly perception- based measures of corruption are flawed and fail to provide a credible assessment of the dimensions of the problem of corruption in Africa. They focus on country ranking (“naming and shaming”) and as such do not provide useful policy insights and practical recommendations to inform policy and institutional reforms to help African countries to stem corruption. Alternative non-perception-based methods of measuring corruption remain inadequately developed and also ignore the international dimension of corruption in Africa. The present report calls upon African countries and partners to move away from purely perception-based measures of corruption and to focus instead on approaches to measuring corruption that are fact-based and built on more objective quantitative criteria. In the interim, perception-based methods anchored on more transparent and representative surveys should be used with caution and complemented, where possible, with quantitative country or case-specific indicators to produce more sophisticated and useful measures of corruption.

Sustainable Development Goals:

Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions