By Foday Moriba Conteh
It was revealed by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) on the 28th January, 2021 that Sierra Leone has again progressed two (2) places upwards in Transparency International’s Global Corruption Ranking, moving from 119 in 2019 to 117 out of 180 countries surveyed in the 2020 Transparency International Corruption Perception Index (TI-CPI).
Also disclosed was that the country also maintains its score of thirty-three (33), which is above the Sub-Saharan average of 32, and the highest the country has ever recorded since the CPI rankings began.
It furthered that in two years, Sierra Leone has moved twelve (12) places upwards on the CPI, from 129 in 2018 to 117 in 2020 highlighting that in 2017, Sierra Leone was ranked at 130.
The ACC stated that the 2020 CPI, released on Thursday, 28th January 2021, reveals that Sierra Leone continues to make remarkable progress in the World’s most respected corruption watchdog’s assessment and rankings and now leads sixty-three (63) countries in the global campaign against corruption, including 30 African countries, among which are; Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Malawi, Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Kenya and at par with Egypt.
“This year’s Report reveals that ‘nearly half of countries have been stagnant on the Index for almost a decade, indicating stalled Government efforts to tackle the root causes of corruption’ but Sierra Leone performed better than the Average Score in Sub-Saharan Africa,” the ACC maintained.
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.
In three 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-One percent (81%) in 2020, making a Thirty-Two percentage (32%) upwards thereby, contributing to Sierra Leone’s eligibility to the Multi-Million Dollars MCC Compact Grant.
The ACC said similar exponential jumps have been recorded in other respected global corruption measurement institutions like Afrobarometer which confirmed that corruption prevalence has massively reduced from 70 in 2015 to a new low of 40% in 2020.
It ended by stating that in light of the aforementioned, the Commission wishes to reassure all Sierra Leoneans of its relentless determination to ensure the country continues to perform favourably in National, Sub-regional, Regional, and Global anti-corruption governance indices.
Bravo to the ACC for such a rank in west Sahara. Together we can fight corruption.