Quiet Corruption? The World Bank on Africa
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By Yash Tandon
Pambazuka
Wednesday, Apr 21, 2010
The 'Africa Development Indicators 2010' report on
'quiet corruption' is one more example of the World Bank's distractive
politics. Distractive because it seeks, wittingly or unwittingly, to
sidetrack issues that are fundamental to understanding the continuing
poverty and underdevelopment of Africa. Distractive also because it
seeks, probably consciously and purposely, to exonerate the World Bank
from its own role in perpetuating Africa's mal-development.
What does the report say? The report essentially makes three points.
Firstly,
it invents or borrows a new concept – 'quiet corruption' (QC) – defined
essentially as the failure on the part of public servants to deliver
services or inputs that have been paid for by the government, corrupt
practices downstream at the frontline of public service provision. The
most prominent examples are absentee teachers in public schools and
absentee doctors in primary clinics. Others include drugs being stolen
from public clinics and sold in the private market, as well as
subsidised fertilizer being diluted before it reaches farmers.
Secondly,
the report argues that 'quiet corruption' is not only pervasive and
widespread in Africa, but it hurts the poor disproportionately, and it
can have long-term consequences. As Obiageli K. Ezekwesili, the World
Bank's Africa region vice-president, says in his foreword, 'Denied an
education because of absentee teachers, children suffer in adulthood
with low cognitive skills and weak health. The absence of drugs and
doctors means unwanted deaths from malaria and other diseases.
Receiving diluted fertilizer that fails to produce results, farmers
choose not to use any fertilizer, leaving them in low-productivity
agriculture.'
Thirdly, QC doesn’t make headlines, the way, for
example, that bribery scandals do. It has yet to be picked up by
Transparency International and other global indexes of corruption. In
order to make this point, the report embellishes a photo on its cover
of an iceberg symbolising that QC is deep in the ocean. What is visible
on the surface is a small part of this scourge, one that, the report
argues, is the cause of so much misery in Africa.
Let us, before
we make a critique of the report, give it its due. There is no denying
that 'quiet corruption' as defined by the report does exist. It is
important to take cognisance of this reality, not only in Africa but in
the whole world. To single out Africa is unfair. Even so, it didn’t
need a whole 200-page report to make the above points. The report is
repetitious, making the same point over and over. A bit of editing
could have reduced it to a more user-friendly report of no more than 50
pages, and, above all, reduced the cost of production and distribution,
disallowing a bit of 'quiet corruption' within the World Bank itself.
This, however, is a minor failing compared to more profound failings of
the report.
Where does the report go wrong?
First its
exaggerated claim that 'quiet corruption' is in its own words so
'lethal' that it 'undermines Africa’s development', and that it
significantly explains why Africa is unable to meet its Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs). The report says: 'The widespread prevalence
of big-time and quiet corruption in Africa significantly undermines the
impact of investments to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
In the parlance of this essay, the iceberg of corruption is sinking
considerable efforts to improve the well-being of Africa’s citizens,
particularly the poor who rely predominantly on publicly provided
services. Specifically, corruption and poor governance help explain why
increased funding allocations, such as those aimed at meeting the
United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), have not
necessarily translated into improvements in human development
indicators, particularly in Africa'.
Let us examine this claim
with a clear mind. What it says is that investments aimed at meeting
the MDGs in Africa are undermined because petty bureaucrats, teachers,
doctors, nurses, customs officers – indeed, the entire middle-level
public service – are the bane of society. They are the ones responsible
for Africa's failure to meet the MDGs. To provide this claim with
empirical evidence, the report cites several examples.
Uganda
appears to be in the worst situation in the matter of teacher
absenteeism, for example. The report cites some secondary sources to
'prove' its point. In western Kenya, Glewwe, Kremer and Moulin (2009)
document that 12 per cent of teachers were found to be outside the
classroom when they should have been teaching. An even higher fraction
is estimated in Uganda, where nearly one-third of teachers found were
not in the classroom during learning periods (Habyarimana 2007).
Another
example of 'quiet corruption' is in the transport sector. The report
cites a study by Teravaninthorn and Raballand (2008), who constructed a
dataset of transport costs and prices covering 11 routes and 7
countries. The study found that 'corruption tax' (to use the word
employed in the report) in the form of levies that policemen and custom
officials charge is significant in West Africa – about 20 to 27 per
cent, although, surprisingly, this 'tax' is almost insignificant in
eastern and southern Africa, at 1 per cent. And in Tanzania, it appears
it is the doctors and nurses that bear the brunt of malaria-related
deaths. The report cites two studies (de Savigny et al 2008; Das and
Leonard 2009) to show that in rural Tanzania nearly four out of five
children who died of malaria sought medical attention from modern
health facilities. The report concludes, 'A range of manifestations of
quiet corruption, including the absence of diagnostic equipment, drug
pilfering, provider absenteeism, and very low levels of diagnostic
effort, all contributed to this dire statistic.'
There are at least three things wrong with this kind of analysis and 'reporting'.
One
is methodological. Various researchers employ various methodologies in
their surveys, as well as various conceptual categories. Neither the
concepts nor the research methodologies are comparable. Any casual
reader would find it an astonishing discovery, if the above-mentioned
statistics are anything to go by, that in East Africa for example,
teachers appear to be the most corrupt in the whole of Africa, but
policemen and customs officials, by comparison, appear to be the
paragon of virtue!
The second is the improper use the World
Bank makes of this secondary literature it quotes in the report. The
authors and researchers might have their own reasons for carrying out
the research they did, and they might have their own explanations for
things like teacher absenteeism. Moreover, they do not go on to say
that these kinds of 'malpractices' by teachers, doctors, nurses,
customs officials, policemen and lower- or middle-level bureaucrats
provide an 'explanation' for the failure of Africa to reach the MDGs.
This is the World Bank's conclusion, and not of the authors and
researchers they amply quote. It is opportunistic, to say the least,
for the World Bank to abuse the authority of scholars to massage its
own preconceived conclusion, and to 'prove' a point that these scholars
are not making.
The third criticism of the report, and this is
the most 'lethal' (to use a word the report uses in relation to 'quiet
corruption') to the World Bank's argument, is that by drawing attention
to petty corruption (which, admittedly, exists in Africa, as indeed in
most parts to the so-called 'Third World'), the World Bank tries, in
vein, to shield its own culpability in the creation and perpetuation of
the condition of poverty and underdevelopment the countries of Africa
(and other countries in the Third World). It is a known fact that in
the 1980s and 1990s, the World Bank, together with the IMF
(International Monetary Fund) and the so-called 'donor' community and
the World Trade Organisation (WTO), devised a fairly elaborate system
of what was called the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) and
later the poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs) which, in return
for 'development aid', forced these countries to adopt premature
liberalisation, privatisation of their economies and other such
policies. Ample evidence has mounted since then to show,
incontrovertibly, that the SAPs had devastating consequences, including
deindustrialisation and mass unemployment in those countries that had
adopted the SAPs and PRSPs. For additional on-the-ground evidence of
the effects of SAPs on the economies of Bangladesh, Ecuador, El
Salvador, Ghana, Hungary, Mexico, the Philippines, Uganda and Zimbabwe,
see Structural Adjustment Participatory Review International Network
(SAPRIN) (2004), 'Structural Adjustment: the Policy Roots of Economic
Crisis, Poverty and Inequality' (Zed Books).
It is out of
desperation and the necessity of survival that had then forced
teachers, nurses and lower- or middle-level bureaucrats, those that
could not emigrate to the West (and thousands did), to resort to petty
corruption at home. This does not excuse their actions. But that does
go a long way to help understand the root causes of the so-called
'quiet corruption' which now the World Bank blames for the failure to
attain the MDGs in Africa. African countries have indeed failed to
attain the MDGs. The bulk of the blame should be laid at the door of
the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, the so-called 'development aid' from
the 'donor community', and, let us not shield them, the top echelons of
the governments in Africa. It is 'grand corruption', not 'quiet
corruption' that has much to answer for Africa's under- and
mal-development.
One final point needs to be made. The World
Bank Vice-President Obiageli K. Ezekwesili argues in the foreword that
'It will require a combination of strong and committed leadership,
policies and institutions at the sectoral level, and—most
important—increased accountability and participation by citizens, the
demand side of good governance' to get rid of corruption. We cannot
agree more. But the World Bank is hardly a model to emulate. The whole
process of imposing the structural adjustment programmes on Africa was
top-down. Once this was completed, members of civil society and NGOs
(non-governmental organisations) were invited to make their input. This
was called 'participatory planning'. Many of these NGOs were also
funded by the donors. The NGOs were supposed to represent the people.
They were a substitute for the people. Once the World Bank had involved
the NGOs, it could say, 'The people were consulted; we have embarked on
a people-driven process.' Once the fig leaf was in place, the
implementation of the 'plan' could go on safe in the media-hyped
illusion that the people had 'participated'. The fig leaf could
scarcely cover the bank's nudity.
The 'quiet corruption' of
lower- and middle-level bureaucrats, teachers, nurses, policemen and
customs officials in Africa, although indefensible, is, in its proper
context, a 'quiet resistance' against the daily practice of 'grand
corruption' of the ruling oligarchs and plutocrats in Africa in
connivance with the donor community and the 'grand coalition' of the
World Bank, the IMF and the WTO.
Yash Tandon is the author of 'Development and Globalisation: Daring to Think Differently' (Pambazuka Press). Pambazuka
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