daniel chigunwe
Business Writer
Zimbabwe’s ranking on the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) has seen an improvement, moving up eight spots from 157 out of 180 countries in 2022 to 149 in 2023, a report by Transparency International (TI) has disclosed.
Each year, the Berlin-based watchdog TI releases an index of public perceptions of corruption in public institutions.
The southern African country’s score in the 2022 CPI was 23, a figure which rose to 24 in 2023.
A country’s score is the perceived level of public sector corruption among experts and business people on a scale of 0-100, where 0 means highly corrupt and 100 means very clean, according to TI.
Since his ascension to power, President Emmerson Mnangagwa has made declarations promising to attack corruption in the country as a “cancer” undermining national development.
Though some high-profile members of society have been arrested for corruption, they are free on bail while others had their cases stuck in courts.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, despite improvement in some countries, most maintain a low score.
The regional average is 33, the world’s lowest.
Ninety percent of countries in sub-Saharan Africa scored under 50.
“Despite a regional survey ranking corruption among the most important problems that Africans want their governments to address, the 2023 CPI shows that countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have a long way to go in their fight against corruption,” TI said.
“The region’s persistent challenges stem from decades of severe underfunding in public sectors, exacerbated by corruption and illicit financial flows siphoning resources away from basic public services.”
For the sixth year in a row, Denmark heads the ranking with a score of 90.
Bongani Ndlovu