In an effort to measure and track the prevalence of corruption around the world, Transparency International, a global movement working in more than 100 countries to end the injustice of corruption, has developed the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).
The CPI ranks 180 countries and territories worldwide by perceived levels of public sector corruption, scored on a scale of 0 (most corrupt) to 100 (most clean).
According to the organization, the final CPI results for 2022 show how corruption undermines sub-Saharan Africa’s interconnected pathways to democracy, security and prosperity, especially during a global crisis. The high cost of living and the COVID-19 pandemic will negatively impact the region’s ability to recover. Economic, environmental and health concern impacts require significant financial resources that cannot be lost to corruption.
As Africa struggles against corruption, some African countries fared well in the CPI due to robust democratic systems with their legislative and policy frameworks constantly undergoing reform. In these countries, there are very strong efforts to implement several measures to increase transparency in government and business transactions.
The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) aggregates data from several different sources that provide perceptions
Businessmen and country experts on the level of corruption in the public sector. Transparency International takes the following steps to calculate the CPI: select data sources, rank the data sources on a scale of 0-100, calculate the mean, and finally report a measure of uncertainty. The most elaborate measures used by the organization to quantify corruption under these factors are extensively detailed in the report.
Below are the 10 African countries that scored the highest in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.