Namibia drops on corruption index

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Windhoek ∙ [email protected]

Namibia has been ranked 58 out of 180 countries by Transparency International, the leading civil society organisation fighting corruption worldwide, on its latest Corruption Perception Index (CPI).

Namibia scored 49 points on the index, dropping two points and one place on the ranking since last year.

The index ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption. It uses a scale of zero to 100, where a score of zero is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.

Of sub-Saharan African countries, Namibia is ranked in sixth place, the same as last year.

Seychelles (global score of 77), Cabo Verde (58), Botswana (55), Mauritius (54) and Rwanda (53) are among the sub-Saharan African countries ranked above Namibia.

“With an average score of 33 out of 100, sub-Saharan Africa shows no significant improvement from previous years. The gains made by top scorers are overshadowed by the region’s poor performance overall – 44 out of 49 countries still score below 50,” the report read.

It added that this reinforces the urgent need for African governments to implement existing anti-corruption commitments if they are to alleviate the devastating effect of corruption on millions of citizens living in extreme poverty.

Stagnating

The index indicated that control of corruption has stagnated or worsened in 86% of countries over the last decade.

“The global Covid-19 pandemic has also been used in many countries as an excuse to curtail basic freedoms and side-step important checks and balances. And despite the increasing international momentum to end the abuse of anonymous shell companies, many high-scoring countries with relatively ‘clean’ public sectors continue to enable transnational corruption,” the report read.

This year, the top countries are Denmark, Finland and New Zealand, each with a score of 88.

South Sudan (11), Syria (13) and Somalia (13) remain at the bottom of the index.