For the 5th consecutive year in five years, Sierra Leone has, again, progressed upwards in Transparency International’s Global Corruption Country Rankings, moving from 110 in 2022 to 108 out of 180 countries surveyed in the 2023 Transparency International Corruption Perception Index (TI-CPI) published on 30th January, 2024.
Sierra Leone also increased its 2022 score of thirty-four (34) to thirty-five (35) in 2023, which is again above the sub-Saharan average, and the highest the country has ever recorded since the CPI rankings began. In five years consistently, Sierra Leone has moved twenty-two (22) places upwards on the CPI, from 130 in 2017 to 108 in 2023.
The just-released CPI reveals that Sierra Leone continues to make remarkable progress in the World’s most respected corruption watchdog’s assessment and rankings and now leads Seventy-Two (72) countries in the global campaign against corruption, including Thirty-One (31) African countries, among which are; Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Cameroon, Uganda, Kenya, Angola, Madagascar, Mozambique, Niger and Libya.
“This year’s CPI shows mixed results in Africa, with significant improvements in a few countries. However, most African countries experienced stagnation, maintaining the region’s consistently poor performance, with an unaltered regional average score of 33”. Nonetheless, Sierra Leone performed better than the Average Score in Sub-Saharan Africa for the fourth year (score of 35 in 2023), 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, Sierra Leone has been outstanding in its Score in the ‘Control of Corruption’ Indicator in the Millennium Challenge Corporation Scorecard, with consistent excellent scores above 70% in 6 consecutive years.
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 40% in 2020, when the last survey was conducted.
In light of the foregoing, the Commission 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.
I do not think this is worthy of celebrating. Why can’t we move into the first twenty position. It is not as if we do not know where the problem lies. our problem is our refusal to act to stop the leakage. For example, the recent Auditor General’s report for 2022 has clearly indicated the specific MDA, Ministries, Statehouse department and individuals who do not want to subject themselves to accountability. The only explanation for such disregard of the laid down rules to account for any money given to you and/or obtained by you for the state is corruption and malfeasance. It is a Human Right Issue. Many are perishing because of this drain in the meagre funds that should better the lives of the ordinary people in the state. So, if the report comes out, and nothing is done about it especially those issues that are stated as UNRESOLVED because of lack of documentations, and the same people named therein are either promoted or sent to other Ministries and MDAs whilst the issue is left unresolved, how are we going to stamp out corruption? Audit report is one of the main whistleblowers and should be treated with all the seriousness it deserved by the most senior authorities of the land including the President, Speaker, and Chief justice.