CORRUPTION

International Affairs Forum Fall 2016
...analyzing anti-corruption efforts in West Africa, a region
where data is sparse and often questionable, must be primarily
done through qualitative case studies rather than empirical
surveys
and hopefully succeed over neighboring authoritarian regimes (Kanbur 2000). While the efficacy
of these policies has been mixed at best and wildly detrimental at worst, conditionalities are still an
oft-employed mechanism employed by international actors today in attempts to combat corruption.
Scholarly research still dissents about why, in particular, conditionalities do not work, but there exists
a broad consensus that an alternative method of battling corruption is needed.
II. METHODOLOGY
I propose that analyzing anti-corruption efforts in West Africa, a region where data is sparse and
often questionable, must be primarily done through qualitative case studies rather than empirical
surveys. Any data on West Africa is somewhat suspect if not outright questionable: recent research
on data collection methods within West Africa have shown that the data collected, especially on
corruption and government accountability, are riddled with purposeful and accidental errors (Cave
2014, Adeyemi 2010). In Ghana, a successful recent anti-corruption movement targeting the judiciary
was catalyzed by an investigative report by award-winning journalist Anas Anas. This specific
movement led to the jailing of more than thirty justices and subsequent investigation of more than
100 judicial staff (Darko 2015). I propose examining this case of anti-corruption, which is one of the
most renowned and successful in the last five decades, to analyze what anti-corruption efforts might
be feasible and perhaps more successful in modern West Africa than traditional trickle-down anticorruption
aid conditionality.
III. GHANAIAN CASE STUDY
Ghana is a midsized country located on the West Coast of Africa, often nicknamed the “Gold Coast”,
a remnant from its colonial period. The official language is English, but local languages Twi and Ga
are also popularly spoken. More than twenty-five million people live in Ghana. In recent years, it
has been described as one of the shining beacons of West Africa, not only for its relatively stable
economic growth but also for what many third party observers thought was a less corrupt government
compared to many of its neighboring countries, including the Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Togo, and
Nigeria (Kermeliotis 2014). This is not to imply that Ghana’s government is corruption free—internal
polling and anecdotes suggest that there is still rampant corruption within many branches of the
government (Agbodohu and Churchill 2014). Tsikata writes that in Ghana, “Corruption has weakened
most state institutions… The diaspora of Ghanaian academics and professionals and the weakening
of institutions were to have serious consequences when economic reforms were finally initiated”
(Tsikata 1999). But the point is that relative to its neighbors in West Africa, Ghana has one of the less
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