<p><em>Tahiru Azaaviele Liedong, University of Bath</em></p>
<p>In 2002, the African Union reported that Africa lost about USD$148 billion through corruption every year. This represented 25% of the continent’s combined GDP at the time. Nothing much has changed.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-42882 size-full" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/bribery.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="350" /></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Last year, the global business advisory firm KPMG estimated that if South Africa reduced its corruption by one point, as measured by Transparency International’s corruption perception index, it could add R23 billion to its GDP.</p>
<p>The thrust of these facts is that the lost monies could have been used to finance institutional development and reduce the constraints to doing business in Africa.</p>
<p>In spite of the effects of corruption on the private sector, businesses in Africa are relatively silent about the menace. Efforts to combat corruption are largely championed by civil service, non-governmental organisations and international development agencies.</p>
<p>A new study has linked the private sector’s silence to the inadequacy of business education in the region. It notes that business schools can play a vital role in the fight against corruption. They can do this by nurturing business students to become institutional entrepreneurs – people who will bring about institutional change – not only in Africa’s economic domain, but also in the political arena.</p>
<p>Schools can equip students and managers with knowledge and expertise to advocate for public accountability and good governance, as advocated by the World Economic Forum.</p>
<h2>Why the private sector is silent</h2>
<p>There are several reasons why private companies often remain silent about corruption. One is that some of them indulge in and benefit from corruption.</p>
<p>In Ghana, for example, a “create-loot-share” model of corruption persists. Politicians, public officers and businesses collude to create and profit from fraudulent acts, including inflated contracts. This is also common in Nigeria, where between 2009 and 2014, about USD$2 billion was salvaged from inflated contracts by the government agency set up to vet procurement.</p>
<p>Even multinational companies from the least corrupt countries gain from Africa’s corrupt political elite. For example, in 2011, UK’s Shell and Italy’s ENI paid USD$1.1 billion to Nigerian officials for access to an oilfield currently worth USD$500 billion. US tyre firm Goodyear paid more than USD$3.2 million in bribes to Angolan and Kenyan government officials in order to win supply contracts.</p>
<p>The pressure on companies to indulge in corruption is considerable in Africa. According to data from the World Bank, 71% of enterprises in Sierra Leone, 66.2% in Tanzania, 64% in Angola, 75.2% in Congo and 63% in Mali expect to give “gifts” to secure government contracts.</p>
<p>The ethical dilemma for business managers is that refusing to pay bribes can cost their companies contracts, licences and revenues. Essentially, good companies which do not yield to extortion may lose out to bad competitors who do. Consequently, most companies yield to corruption or stay silent. Speaking up can make them targets for political witch hunts and discrimination.</p>
<p>A much deeper reason for the private sector’s inactivity is that managers simply lack the political skills required to shape their business environments. This deficiency arises because the link between political institutions and economic markets has not received adequate attention in business schools. So the schools are turning out managers with good knowledge of business but inadequate understanding of public governance and inability to influence public institutions.</p>
<p>Most people, including business managers, feel powerless when dealing with corrupt government officials. They regard official institutions as too powerful to take on and see corrupt practices, such as bribery, as unchangeable. But with good education and training, this can change.</p>
<h2>African business schools can help</h2>
<p>Corruption is multi-faceted. So there is no simple solution for it. It must be battled on all fronts. Business schools can do their part by developing competence to confront corruption.</p>
<p>Some in Africa have already done so: three business schools introduced an anti-corruption programme sanctioned by the United Nations into their classrooms.</p>
<p>But much more can be done. Business schools should teach business-government relations, or corporate political activity. This is crucial because many business managers don’t know how to influence their political environments even though they are affected by government policies. Students and managers may be taught ethics in schools, but ethical values are difficult to uphold in contexts where corruption is highly endemic, such as Africa.</p>
<p>If the fight against corruption in Africa is to succeed, business managers must learn to engage public officers differently. The ability to do this can be developed in business schools.</p>
<p>Students and managers need to learn about political strategies that can change the way institutions work. Techniques for ad hoc management of bribery are no longer enough. Companies can, for example, present a united front against corruption so that none can be singled out for “punishment”.</p>
<p>The business community could also learn to self regulate by refusing to deal with corrupt companies, as was recently reported in South Africa. Collective campaigns for public procurement transparency can also prevent politicians from using the private sector to plunder State funds. Inaction breeds corruption, as seen in Kenya’s USD$1 billion Anglo Leasing scandal.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87405/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />African business schools are valuable in the fight against corruption. They can take bold steps to review their curricula and promote active corporate citizenship. When they see what a difference they can make, the continent may begin to shake off a major hindrance to its development.</p>
<p>This article was originally published on The Conversation.</p>


Business schools have a role to play in fighting corruption in Africa

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<p>BMI, the research arm of Fitch Ratings Agency, predicts that Ghana’s budget deficit will be 5.7 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product by the end of 2018. Sulemana Mohammed, CEO Doobia, joins CNBC Africa for more.</p>


Unpacking Ghana’s debt strategy

<p data-reactid="35">Africa should move beyond aid handouts that have failed to bring growth and prosperity and move to an era of mutual respect with Western countries, Ghana’s president said on Tuesday.</p>
<p data-reactid="35"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-291672 size-full" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Ghana-President_Nana-Akufo-Addo_GettyImages.png" alt="" width="850" height="566" /></p>
<p data-reactid="36">President Nana Akufo-Addo, elected less than a year ago, said aid to his nation from donor countries was unsustainable and harmful to both sides.</p>
<p data-reactid="38">“We do not want to remain the beggars of the world, we do not want to be dependent on charity,” he said in a speech in London, setting out a vision for Africa’s future.</p>
<p>“We can and we should be able to build a Ghana with use of her own resources and their proper management as a way to engineer social and economic growth in our country,” he said.</p>
<p data-reactid="40">Resource-rich Ghana is an exporter of gold and oil and the world’s second largest cocoa producer. Akufo-Addo has vowed to clean up corruption in the West African nation’s cocoa sector and restore output to 1 million tonnes by 2020.</p>
<p data-reactid="41">Akufo-Addo, who took office in January, called for closer trade ties with neighboring Ivory Coast and across Africa, home to 1.2 billion people and a burgeoning middle class.</p>
<p data-reactid="42">Ghana was the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to win independence from colonial rule 60 years ago, a milestone that paved the way for independence for nations across the continent.</p>
<p data-reactid="43">“We are painfully aware we are nowhere near where we should be,” he said in the speech to the Royal African Society. “After 60 years it is obvious that the aid bus will not take Africa where it has to be.”</p>
<p data-reactid="44">British-Ghanaian musician “Fuse ODG” agreed that Africa must create its own narrative and hoped his music would offer the world a new perspective of a continent free from dependency.</p>
<p data-reactid="45">“We have to stop the aid, it messes up our economy, it messes up our markets,” added Herman Chinery-Hesse, a Ghanaian software entrepreneur often dubbed the Bill Gates of Ghana.</p>
<p>Mindsets of dependency and donations must be discarded for equality in global relationships, Akufo-Addo said.</p>
<p>“We do not want to be pitied,” he said. “We do not want to be pawns or victims.”</p>
<div class="Attribution_attribution_o4ojT" data-reactid="47">
<p class="Attribution_content_27_rw" data-reactid="48">Reporting by Adela Suliman; editing by Ros Russell.</p>
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Africans must move beyond aid and not be ‘beggars of the world’: Ghana’s president

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<p>MTN Ghana says they receive about 365 complaints of fraud from subscribers in the country. To solve this company has filtered the texts that pass through its platform and blocks 400,000 scam messages on a daily basis.</p>


Tackling mobile money fraud in Ghana

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<p>Joe Femi Dagunro joins CNBC Africa to discuss the intricacies of what a single currency would mean for the West African region.</p>


Will a single currency for ECOWAS succeed?

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<p>Ghana will start receiving bids for domestic bonds worth 6 billion cedis to settle energy sector debts that have accumulated over the past decade today. Emmanuel Tsigbey, a chartered economic policy analyst joins CNBC Africa.</p>


Ghana to receive bids for domestic bonds worth ₵6bn today

<p><em>This comment piece was written by Charlie Robertson, Global Chief Economist, Renaissance Capital</em></p>
<p>Uuumm .. that’s a toughie.  But we really should know so we can drop it into conversation in a casually cool way – I always find listing the 54 African countries by GDP in 2017 makes me pretty popular – and I want to give you too the chance to gain a reputation for exciting repartee.</p>
<p>What do we know ? Based on the dodgy exchange rates being used in Egypt until November 2016 and in Nigeria/Ethiopia/Angola etc all year – Nigeria was the largest economy in Africa in 2016, followed by Egypt and then SA.  All of Africa had a similar GDP to India, but was not as big as California. That goes a long way to explaining relative news coverage.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-287920" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/RM1.jpg" alt="" width="875" height="427" /><br />
Source: IMF with a little help from Renaissance Capital</p>
<p>What about 2017 ? “We have a problem here Captain” as Scottie would have said because we just worked out that the IMF is using an average exchange rate for Nigeria of 304/$ for its GDP estimates. Now I like the IMF resident a lot – but I think this is hard to justify. The I and E fx window rate has averaged 368/$ from 25 April to 11 October. What about Jan-Apr? Do we use the parallel market rate that hit as weak as 520/$ in early 2017, or the Naira rate quoted on Bloomberg which was 313/$ ? In the graph below, we show both Nigeria using the IMF figure, and Nigeria using a 367/$ average. If you believe the IMF, Nigeria was number 1. If you think 367/$ is more realistic, it was number 2 and SA swept past both Egypt* and Nigeria to take number 1 slot again. Humble South Africans can once again stand tall, arm in arm with President Zuma, a man who has helped ensure per capita GDP in 2017 is not above the lofty heights it achieved in 2007. To be fair to Zuma, Brexit has helped push UK per capita GDP back to below 2006 levels. This must be a deliberate part of the UK charm offensive to rebuild links to the old Empire so that will help make Britain great again.<br />
<em><br />
*at least Nigeria has an IMF implied exchange rate, Egypt doesn’t let the IMF publish one, so you are relying on us for that figure </em></p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-287923" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/RM2.jpg" alt="" width="482" height="300" /></p>
<p>Meanwhile Ethiopia cleverly timed its devaluation until just after the IMF publication so it can lay claim to 8th place .. when the deval probably means it is 9th behind Kenya.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-287924" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/RM32.jpg" alt="" width="908" height="524" /></p>
<p>Source: IMF with a lot more interference from RenCap in this one</p>
<p>What about GDP per capita ? Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Ivory Coast are all in roughly the same place – just ahead of Bangladesh &#8211; with wealth levels double that of Rwanda or Uganda. Of these, Kenya, Ghana and southern Nigeria are best placed to industrialize in the same way that southern Bangladesh has.</p>
<p>I tested this last chart on twitter and the instant response is … “not Equatorial Guinea”. Fair enough, the average per capita GDP may bear no relation at all to GDP per person once the boss has nabbed all the oil wealth. But the point is, India is mid-way between countries like Egypt, Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya, and positive themes should be found in a few of them.</p>
<p>Re the Kenyan elections – what we heard at our East Africa conference is that President Kenyatta would probably win a re-run, especially if Odinga boycotted the second round.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-287919" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/RM4.jpg" alt="" width="980" height="543" /><br />
Source: IMF, Renaissance Capital, World Bank (for Somalia population)</p>
<p><strong>CONCLUSION:</strong> GDP per capita has probably bottomed now in Egypt, Nigeria and a fair few others. The next move should be up again as we enter 2018. Nigeria may have lost out to SA in terms of being the largest economy in Africa in 2017 (let’s see what happens to the ZAR by year-end) but this SA resurgence won’t last for too long. We continue to see Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Ghana and Kenya as among those best placed to industrialize in the coming years.</p>


Africa’s economies ranked by GDP, which is really the largest?

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<p>According to the Bank of Ghana&#8217;s summary of economic and financial data, Ghana raked in 8.95 billion dollars from cocoa, oil and gold exports as at August 2017. This represents a growth of 27.8 per cent between August 2016 and the same period in 2017</p>


Ghana’s export revenues hit $8.9bn

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<p>Ghana’s September inflation figures have fallen from 12.3 per cent in August to 12.2 per cent. Collins Appiah, Economist joins CNBC Africa from Accra to discuss how far away the country is from its 8 per cent target.</p>


Ghana inflation falls to 12.2% in September

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<p>According to the Deputy Managing Director of the Ghana Stock Exchange Ekow Afedzie, improved technology is crucial to market data sharing in the region. CNBC Africa’s Oyedamola Akinsanya caught up with him to discuss the importance of data to markets</p>


Importance of data to markets

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<p>Ghana&#8217;s gross domestic product growth rose to 9.0 per cent in the second quarter of 2017 from 6.6 per cent in the first quarter of the year. This figure is a significant increase from the same period last year when the country&#8217;s economy.</p>


Ghana’s economy sees 9% growth in Q2

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<p>Ghana&#8217;s National Communications Authority recently granted conditional approval for a merger between the local operations of Millicom&#8217;s Tigo and Bharti Airtel. The new entity would become Ghana&#8217;s second largest mobile operator.</p>


Tigo, Airtel Ghana merger gets approval

<p data-reactid="39">Ghana’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth was 9.0 percent in the second quarter of 2017 compared to 6.6 percent in the previous three months, the statistics office said on Wednesday.</p>
<p data-reactid="40">For years, Ghana’s economy grew at around 8 percent per year, but it slowed sharply in 2014 due to lower prices for its commodity exports and a fiscal crisis that forced the government to sign a $918 million credit programme with the International Monetary Fund.</p>
<p data-reactid="41">The growth figure is subject to revision, the statistics office said.</p>
<div class="Attribution_attribution_o4ojT" data-reactid="42">
<p class="Attribution_content_27_rw" data-reactid="43">Reporting by Kwasi Kpodo; Editing by Nellie Peyton</p>
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Ghana GDP growth rises to 9.0% in Q2 2017

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<p>According to some analysts, bankers in Ghana are anticipating a reduction in the policy rate as the Bank of Ghana’s Monetary Policy Committee is expected to announce its decision later today.</p>


What to expect from Ghana’s MPC

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<p>Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire have appealed to the African Development Bank for a $1.2 billion loan to help develop the cocoa value chain and encourage chocolate consumption. Edward George, Head Group Research at Ecobank joins CNBC Africa for more.</p>


Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire appeal for $1.2bn loan from AfDB for cocoa output

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<p>According to a report released by BMI, the research arm of the Fitch Ratings Agency, Ghana&#8217;s economy is expected to record its first balance of trade surplus in 20 years.</p>


Ghana to record first balance of trade surplus in 20 years – Report

<p><strong><em><span class="fn author-name">Nic Cheeseman |</span> University of Birmingham</em></strong></p>
<p>There is much to celebrate as the world marks International Day of Democracy. The last year has seen important democratic breakthroughs in Africa. In Gambia an entrenched autocrat was forced from power. In Ghana, a sitting president lost an election for the first time.</p>
<p>In just the last few weeks, Kenya has also joined the club of precedent- setting nations, after the Supreme Court ruled that the election of President Uhuru Kenyatta was illegal and must be held again. Not only was this a first in Kenya, it was also the first time that the election of a sitting president had been overturned by the judiciary in Africa.</p>
<p>These changes reflect a broader trend in sub-Saharan Africa and much of the world. An increasing number of countries are holding multiparty elections. And an increasing proportion of these states have witnessed a transfer of power from one party or leader to another.</p>
<p>It’s true that more elections are now being held than at any time in human history. But recent highlights in Gambia, Ghana and Kenya mask a problematic reality, namely that the expansion of multi-party politics has often gone hand-in-hand with political and economic exclusion. Over the past five years, the level of political repression and economic inequality has increased in Africa. In turn, this has called into question the extent of the continent’s democratic gains.</p>
<h2>Rising repression</h2>
<p>In recent times high levels of repression have been witnessed across much of the continent. These include the arrest of opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, as he campaigned against his defeat in the 2016 presidential election in Uganda. Also, in Kenya there were a high number of human rights violations when security forces cracked down on opposition protests during the election.</p>
<p>According to Freedom House, an American think tank that rates the level of freedom in every country in the world, the quality of civil liberties in Africa has fallen every year for a decade. Seven out of the 15 countries that showed the biggest deterioration in the quality of their political environment over the last 12 months were African. They are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Niger, South Sudan, and Zambia. Next year, Tanzania may well join that list.</p>
<p>Other forms of political exclusion are also prevalent. Rwanda leads the world on female legislative representation while Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda also perform well on this metric. But very few women are ever elected in the continent’s largest states such as Angola, Nigeria and the DRC.</p>
<p>Minority groups often suffer a similar fate. In Botswana, a state often lauded as one of those leading on democratic rights in Africa, the indigenous San community have been largely excluded from the political process. Similarly, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer citizens typically find that their human rights are undermined. Fortunately, this is not true of countries with more progressive constitutions such as South Africa.</p>
<h2>Rising inequality</h2>
<p>In many states, political exclusion has gone hand in hand with rising economic inequality. As a result the relative poverty – the gap between the rich and the poor – is growing. This is despite the fact that the level of absolute poverty has fallen in a number of countries.</p>
<p>In other words, serious developmental gains are occurring at the same time that other forms of economic exclusion are intensifying.</p>
<p>One of the most stunning facts about the continent is that the <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi">Human Development Index</a> – a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators – shows that</p>
<blockquote><p><a href="http://africasacountry.com/2017/01/african-inequality-rising/">every country in Africa is today less equal than it was in 2010</a>.</p></blockquote>
<p>More worryingly, there is no evidence that democracies are performing better than authoritarian systems on this issue. If anything, the reverse is true. Indeed, one of the most intriguing paradoxes of African democracy is that it is those countries that are most democratic that are most unequal. Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa, three of the continent’s most secure democracies, feature the highest levels of inequality in the world.</p>
<p>The combination of political and economic exclusion in Africa is important for intrinsic and instrumental reasons. Intrinsically, democracy is failing to deliver if it is not helping the worst as much as the best off. Instrumentally, the combination of economic and political exclusion increases the risk that political grievances will develop into instability.</p>
<h2>Building a more inclusive world</h2>
<p>One reason that democratisation has not always reduced the degree of exclusion is that political systems in Africa, much like the rest of the world, tend not to feature inclusive political arrangements.</p>
<p>The continent only features a handful of states that are federal or feature high levels of political devolution. These include Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa and Sudan. Moreover, even within this small sample the ability of opposition parties to get elected at the sub-national level has often been limited, especially in Ethiopia and Sudan. As a result, individuals and groups that lose out in the race for national office rarely enjoy the kind of local self-government that might make them feel that they have a stake in the political system.</p>
<p>Institutional mechanisms to ensure a form of power sharing are also rare. By and large African states are presidential and highly majoritarian. They also do not feature constitutional provisions that guarantee minorities and losing parties a seat at the table.</p>
<p>Indeed, Burundi is currently the only country that comes close to the consociational “ideal type” of inclusive politics outlined by the famous political scientist Arendt Lijphart. But even there the authoritarian bent of President Pierre Nkurunziza has undermined both the letter and the spirit of the country’s carefully designed constitution.</p>
<p>Absent political representation, and with so few checks and balances on the exercise of power, it is unsurprising that minorities and opposition groups get such a raw deal. Of course, this is not to say that political inclusion is a cure-all: there are many established democracies with less exclusive political arrangements that have failed to reduce economic inequality. But until African political systems become less majoritarian and do a better job of protecting the rights and interests of minorities, the true benefits of democratic government are unlikely to be realised.</p>
<p><em>This article was first published in The Conversation.</em></p>


Ghana

Business schools have a role to play in fighting corruption in Africa

Unpacking Ghana’s debt strategy

Africans must move beyond aid and not be ‘beggars of the world’: Ghana’s president

Tackling mobile money fraud in Ghana

Will a single currency for ECOWAS succeed?

Ghana to receive bids for domestic bonds worth ₵6bn today

Africa’s economies ranked by GDP, which is really the largest?

Ghana’s export revenues hit $8.9bn

Ghana inflation falls to 12.2% in September

Importance of data to markets

Ghana’s economy sees 9% growth in Q2

Tigo, Airtel Ghana merger gets approval

Ghana GDP growth rises to 9.0% in Q2 2017

What to expect from Ghana’s MPC

Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire appeal for $1.2bn loan from AfDB for cocoa output

Ghana to record first balance of trade surplus in 20 years – Report

Op-Ed: Democratic breakthroughs in Africa – time to celebrate but worries still linger

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Ghana

Business schools have a role to play in fighting corruption in Africa

Unpacking Ghana’s debt strategy

Africans must move beyond aid and not be ‘beggars of the world’: Ghana’s president

Tackling mobile money fraud in Ghana

Will a single currency for ECOWAS succeed?

Ghana to receive bids for domestic bonds worth ₵6bn today

Africa’s economies ranked by GDP, which is really the largest?

Ghana’s export revenues hit $8.9bn

Ghana inflation falls to 12.2% in September

Importance of data to markets

Ghana’s economy sees 9% growth in Q2

Tigo, Airtel Ghana merger gets approval

Ghana GDP growth rises to 9.0% in Q2 2017

What to expect from Ghana’s MPC

Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire appeal for $1.2bn loan from AfDB for cocoa output

Ghana to record first balance of trade surplus in 20 years – Report

Op-Ed: Democratic breakthroughs in Africa – time to celebrate but worries still linger

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