By Amin Kef Sesay
In a Press Release dated the 25th January, 2022 and issued by the Anti-Corruption Commission it was indicated that Sierra Leone has again, for the third time in three years, progressed upwards in Transparency International’s Global Corruption Country Rankings, moving from 117 in 2020 to 115 out of 180 countries surveyed in the 2021 Transparency International Corruption Perception Index (TI-CPI).
Also stated is that the country also increases its 2020 score of thirty-three (33) to thirty-four (34) in 2021, which is again above the sub-Saharan average, and the highest the country has ever recorded since the CPI rankings began.
It underscored that in three years consistently, Sierra Leone has moved fifteen (15) places upwards on the CPI, from 129 in 2018 to 115 in 2021. Sierra Leone was ranked at 130 in 2017.
The 2021 CPI, released on Tuesday, 25th January 2022, revealed that Sierra Leone continues to make remarkable progress in the World’s most respected corruption watchdog’s assessment and rankings and now leads sixty-four (64) countries in the global campaign against corruption, including thirty-two (32) African countries, among which are; Kenya, Guinea, Liberia, Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Zambia, Mozambique and Egypt.
This year’s Report reveals that “corruption levels have stagnated worldwide. Over the last decade and this year 27 countries are at historic lows in their CPI score”. Nonetheless, Sierra Leone performed better than the Average Score in Sub-Saharan Africa for the second year, and has consistently improved in the past four years.
The CPI is an annual survey used by TI, the leading global civil society watchdog on the global fight against corruption, to assess comparative perceived levels of public sector corruption in countries across the World.
It could also be recalled that, in four years, Sierra Leone has consistently increased its score in the ‘Control of Corruption’ Indicator in the Millennium Challenge Corporation Scorecard, moving from Forty-Nine percent (49%) in 2017, to Eighty-Three percent (83%) in 2021, making a Thirty-Four percentage (34%) upwards. Similar exponential jumps have been recorded in other respected global corruption measurement institutions like Afrobarometer which confirmed that corruption prevalence has considerably reduced from 70% in 2015 to a latest low of 40% in 2020.
The Anti Corruption Commission, therefore, wishes to reassure all Sierra Leoneans of its continued and consistent determination to ensure the country continues to perform favorably in National, Sub-regional, Regional, and Global anti-corruption governance indices.
