Towards a Common Understanding of Corruption in Africa

Abstract

Corruption takes place at the interface between the public and private sectors. The corollary of this argument is that effective anti-corruption strategies must be designed to both enhance democracy in the political sphere as well as corporate governance in the private sector. Corruption has been manifest in all historical epochs — the periods of colonialism, neo-colonialism and the Cold War and in the contemporary period. In an effort to fight the Cold War through proxy nations in the South, the global superpowers overthrew many democratically elected regimes in Africa, Asia and Latin America and often replaced them with malleable regimes. The legacy of the Cold War has created an environment for the forces of Globalization, which are supranational in character to once again exploit the vulnerabilities of nation states. By situating corruption in its historical context and by linking it to the unregulated and regulated markets of capitalism, nationally and globally, corruption can be seen as more than the relationship between the bribe giver and the bribe taker. It has historical roots; it is systemic and goes beyond the individual to the structural and the institutional levels. By asserting that corruption is rooted in the forces of the market and in the pursuit of profitability, corruption often seen as `the price of doing business' must not be viewed as an intrinsic element of the value system of democratic capitalism.