Baroness Chalker Addresses Africa Investment Forum on Corruption, 8 February 2010
8th February 2010
Baroness Lynda Chalker is among senior government and business leaders attending the Africa Investment Forum (AIF) in Accra, Ghana. The forum has been organised by the Commonwealth Business Council (CBC) in partnership with the Government of Ghana from 8–10 February 2010. Speaking at a session on “Business Action Against Corruption”, Baroness Chalker made the following remarks:
My involvement in helping promote transparency and accountability in African Governments goes back 20 years to my ministerial days. Since then there have been many improvements but many countries still have real corruption battles on their hands. Most progress has been made where private enterprise polices itself well, and business is organised to help honest politicians fight the cancer. Business Action Against Corruption, and Transparency International (TI), whose initial funding came from my development budget, have been instrumental in this.
But the efforts have to continue and with much renewed purpose, including the fight against counterfeiting in which one of my Africa Matters teams is deeply engaged. Even in Ghana where there has been real progress since the 80's, the Public Accounts Committee sittings in 2008 revealed repeated widespread misappropriation of public funds. In Kenya, Government sacked the head of its Standards Bureau, and is now setting up its anti-counterfeiting and corruption Commission. Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission last year arrested a number of Bank CEO's and the Governor of its Central Bank, Sansusi, is engaged on a major banking clean up.
Major efforts were begun in 2004 by the UN Global Compact with its 10th principle against corruption, after extensive consultations. The 2005 UN Convention against Corruption is the underlying instrument for this. But it will only work with an even more active series of plans, country by country, backed by each private sector, to enforce transparency and accountability.
The private sector sent a strong worldwide signal that it shares responsibility for eliminating corruption and the business community continues to show its renewed willingness to play its part in the fight against corruption.
The UN Global Compact office have just announced the delisting of 859 companies in the quarter to 1 Jan 2010 for failing to meet the mandatory annual reporting standards and that the delisting total now stands at 1840 for the year. Each year, thankfully the Compact signs up more companies to fight corruption, whose total stands now at over 5,300 from 135 countries.
TI are working with the UN global Compact to achieve even greater reporting of positive commitment to transparency and public accountability by employees, shareholders, investors and consumers of corrupt practice.
Corruption is the greatest obstacle to reducing poverty. Its causes, not just its symptoms need to be tackled.