CORRUPTION

Global Anti-Corruption Conditionalities and Judicial Reform in Ghana
or sentencing. So while international actors have long focused their efforts on the executive or
political leaders of countries, efforts met with little efficacy, perhaps an adapted approach aimed at the
judiciary would be met with relatively more success in combatting overall governmental corruption.
V. POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS & CONCLUSION
What would programs or initiatives that take these two primary factors into account look like? First,
policymakers within Ghana who are interested in reducing corruption should increasingly look into the
twofold possibility of employing journalists and news people in their anti-corruption movement and
transferring information to laypeople. International actors could begin training and funding programs
targeting journalists, journalism students, and news outlets in Ghana, or more broadly, in West Africa.
Currently, journalist programs don’t have many students or aren’t receiving the requisite funding for
good quality education and publication (Owusu 2011). Anas, who was responsible for uncovering the
scandal, has previously stated that he is interested in perhaps one day starting a journalism school
(Anas 2016). Alternatively, policy makers could begin investigating different ways of transitioning
news and power into the hands of the people, which isn’t easy in a country with limited power and
Internet. Perhaps this program could be done through texting a call list about recent corruption news,
though this in turn creates questions about control, impartiality, and staffing. Nonetheless, new anticorruption
initiatives based in West Africa should focus on empowering news agencies, journalists,
and the electorate rather than creating policies that attempt to limit the political leaders of a country.
International Affairs Forum
In sum, the case study of the reformation of the judiciary in Ghana is indicative that international and
local anti-corruption efforts targeting democratic, developing countries should focus not solely on
conditionalities and programs to de-corrupt the executive sphere, but should also invest in journalism
and other means of informing the electorate. The relative and historical failure of the traditional
conditionalities compared with the resounding success of the Anas scandal in catalyzing a countrywide
anti-corruption campaign as well as leading to the tangible change of forcing more than thirty
corrupt judges out of the system indicates that bottom-up approaches have great potential and are
indeed replicable. The positive impact that the press can have in developing countries should also
not be overlooked: traditional anti-corruption efforts have often neglected bolstering investigative
journalist and newspaper efforts, which, in the case of Ghana, were integral to not only exposing the
corruption, but also combatting it. Perhaps for decades, international actors have been approaching
anti-corruption in the wrong way, approaching corruption through trickle-down means rather than
through bottom-up approaches. Finally, the judiciary of every democratic country is integral to the
rule of law, and thus the economic and social development of a country. Anti-corruption efforts should
not ignore the fact that with a corrupt judiciary, no corrupt official will be indicted or sentenced.
By fostering a well-informed electorate, a strong journalism base, and an even stronger judiciary,
developing countries will combat corruption by leaps and bounds.
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