John Githongo’s Acceptance speech German Africa Award 2004

Your Excellency President Kohler, Professor Hounhues of the German Africa Foundation, Dr. Peter Eigen the Chair of Transparency International, distinguished guests ladies and gentlemen, I am humbled to be here today and honoured that the German Africa Foundation chose me as the recipient of its 2004 German Africa Award.

At the time when news that you had conferred this honour reached me, I was a Permanent Secretary in the Office of the President of Kenya in charge of Governance and Ethics; a position in which I had served for two years. In that capacity I acted as the President’s advisor on anti-corruption matters. On the 7th of February this year I elected to resign from government and resume life outside Government service. While I am deeply honoured to have been chosen to serve my country in that important capacity, after two eventful years I had come to the conclusion that it was no longer possible for me to continue in the service. 

I have learned important lessons on the fight against corruption that are applicable across the continent of Africa. If you allow me I shall share some of these lessons with you here today. 

A great deal has been achieved in Africa over the last decade as democratic space has widened and civil liberties improved. African leaders have started to take ownership of the continent’s common problems and to articulate genuine African solutions to them. Initiatives such as the African Union, the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) as well as the greater willingness of countries on the continent to intervene proactively in neighbouring nations where things go wrong, are all pointers to a generally improving political situation in Africa.

In addition, over the past four decades a great deal of thought and analysis by some of the most acute and sympathetic minds concerned about Africa, has gone into the question of: Why African countries have lagged behind their South-East Asian counterparts, despite sharing similar socio-economic development indicators in the 1960s. The economic tigers of that region have enjoyed rates of economic growth that have propelled them from the Third World to the First while Sub-Saharan nations have floundered, with many of the continent’s inhabitants – the so-called Uhuru generation - now poorer that they were at independence less than two generations ago.

I would like to insist here today that from my experience, corruption – in particular grand corruption and looting of the kind that has tangible economic implications – is at the epicentre of the failure by many African countries to achieve the economic objectives so finely articulated in their development plans. I distinguish between grand corruption and looting because looting implies the engineering of transactions involving public funds for the primary objective of enriching a few and/or fulfilling narrow political patronage-related objectives. 

However, when the scale and impact of these transactions reach macroeconomic proportions; they make a mockery of any government’s best laid down economic plans. Indeed, resource allocation becomes dysfunctional as prioritisation on the basis of the social and economic welfare of the general public becomes impossible.

This also leads to an atmosphere of policy unpredictability which is almost worse than having bad but predictable policies. 

For me the most profound realisation has been that embedded corruption networks, that bring together politicians, businessmen-brokers, bureaucrats and security sector officials can thrive in the shadows as cohesive albeit amorphous entities reshaping the economic destiny of African nations as a result of the size and scale of their illicit transactions; transactions that can entrap entire sections of the political elite. It is thus that the dreams of ordinary African citizens are stolen. I nevertheless must add here that our own African sense of respect and deference to the elderly has not served us well in the political realm and has contributed to the versatility of embedded corruption networks since independence from colonial rule. In addition to this we must recognise that the grand corruption and looting that holds African economies back cannot take place without the skilled facilitation of professionals here in the West – bankers and lawyers in particular – who are integral to the architecture of the complicated transactions via which the most serious cases of corruption are perpetrated.

The persistence of patronage-driven resource allocation decisions can lead to fundamental societal changes such as generational disillusionment – where, as a culture of impunity sets in, successive generations begin to believe that graft is the only way forward in life. In this environment corruption becomes easier to justify on the basis of its need to fund politics, because one ethnic elite feels it needs the fire to fight the fire of the corruptly accumulated financial resources of the previous elite and because, put quite simply, it has worked for those who have come before. This leads to fundamental contradictions that can make a mockery of anti-corruption efforts as the claimed political realities necessitate graft on scales that mean basic economic objectives are relegated in official decisionmaking. 

The challenge for us in Africa over the coming decade is to dismantle these embedded corruption networks that have survived the process of democratisation and continue to hold entire systems of procurement in Africa hostage, especially in the areas of energy, communications and security. This is a war that will have its casualties; and although it continues to hold its hostages, it will eventually be won by the African people. 

Indeed, I would say that this prize I am being awarded today most correctly belongs to the Kenyan people, Kenyan civil society and the Kenyan media whose persistence and consistency against the grand corruption that has impoverished them is one of the most inspiring things happening in Kenya today. 

Thank you.