Delegates at the 30th AU Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on January 25,
2018. This year’s theme is ‘Winning the Fight Against Corruption: A
Sustainable Path to Africa’s Transformation.’ PHOTO | AUC
The theme of this year’s 30th African Union Summit is “Winning
the Fight Against Corruption: A Sustainable Path to Africa’s
Transformation,” and Africa’s 55 Heads of State and their ministers have
to show their records in fighting corruption and design new ways of
fighting graft.
The summit will revisit the AU Convention on Prevention and Combating Corruption, which came into effect in 2006.
Member countries are expected to formulate a common penal policy that protects citizens against the effects of corruption.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari will be leading the war against corruption on behalf of other leaders.
The
AU estimates that 25 per cent of the GDP of African countries is lost
to corruption every year. Five per cent of the resources are lost
through illicit financial flows, with 65 per cent of outflows drawn from
commercial activity by multinationals, and 30 per cent from criminal
activities.
However, members of the civil society
affiliated to the AU are sceptical about the leaders’ political will to
fight widespread corruption.
Since the 2006 Convention
was adopted, only 38 countries have ratified it. The implementation of
the convention is monitored by the AU Advisory Board on Corruption,
which supports partner states in designing measures for preventing and
eradicating corruption.
No enforcement mechanism
According
to Liesl Louw-Vaudran, a senior research consultant at Institute for
Security Studies in South Africa, the AU has no enforcement mechanism to
ensure that member states adhere to its principles.
The
only AU tool that comes close to naming and shaming corruption and bad
governance is the voluntary African Peer Review Mechanism.
“At
this stage, only real day-to-day situations in Africa’s 55 member
states will show whether the AU’s initiatives to fight corruption will
trickle down to where it matters,” Ms Louw-Vaudran said.
She
added that while the AU is upbeat about the success of its
anti-corruption theme for the summit, for now it can do little more than
raise awareness and set norms and standards.
Filling the gaps
A
statement released on January 22 by the African Women’s Development and
Communication Network (Femnet), targeting the summit, says that
resources lost through corruption could be transferred towards the
provision of quality sexual and reproductive health services for
Africa’s women and girls, or even to improve the quality of primary,
secondary and tertiary education.
“Femnet is urging
the African Union to focus on filling the gaps created by corruption by
utilising resources that could have been lost, or that are being
recovered in anti-corruption efforts, to replenish the gaps on provision
of health care services, education and the establishment of
infrastructure to improve the quality of life for its people,” says the
statement.
No comments :
Post a Comment