Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International has ranked Rwanda as the least corrupt in East Africa, maintained the previous third position in Sub-Saharan Africa and 48th globally out of 180 countries studied in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2017.

The report released on Wednesday shows that Rwanda has scored 55%, one score higher than the 54 scores with the 50th position in CPI 2016 which studied 176 countries.

Apollinaire Mupiganyi, the Executive Director of Transparency International Rwanda commended Rwanda’s improvement in the fight against corruption while most countries have dropped scores including the top five countries.

He was speaking Thursday at a media briefing on the report in Kigali.

“Rwanda has slightly improved its scoring and ranking on CPI 2017. However, despite such little progress, this is a commendable improvement on such perception-based index as an improvement of one point in CPI would generate an average additional Financial Direct Investment of 0.5% of national GDP,” said Mupiganyi, attributing the estimates to researchers Kusum W. Ketkar, Athar Muruza and Suhas L. Ketkar.

Clément Musangabatware, the Deputy-Ombudsman in charge of Preventing and Fighting Corruption, called for concerted efforts to perform even better and listed government’s strategies including ensuring the recovery of the bribes, promoting further use of ICT in service delivery and tightening laws punishing corruption.

He also commended media role in reporting corruption and sensitising citizens on reporting and not involving in bribery, adding it is due to every Rwandan’s efforts that the country has moved from the 66th position in 2010 to 48th globally.

A peek into the report

The index which ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and business people, uses a scale of 0 to 100 with zero being the highly corrupt while 100 indicates a country free of corruption.

New Zealand leads the ranking with 89 scores down from 90 in 2016, followed by Denmark, Finland, Norway and Switzerland.

Botswana is the least corrupt country in Sub-Saharan Africa and 34th globally scoring 61, followed by Seychelles with 60 while both Cape Verde and Rwanda come third.

Rwanda leads the East African region, followed by Tanzania ranked 103th, Kenya 143rd, Uganda 151st and Burundi 157th globally.

The bottom five countries are Somalia with 9 scores, South Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan and Yemen with 12, 14, 15 and 16 scores respectively.

The best performing region is Western Europe with an average score of 66 and the worst performer is Sub-Saharan Africa scoring 32, below the global average score of 43.

For the first time, the study examined the relationship between corruption levels and the protection of journalistic freedoms and engagement of civil society. It found that at least nine out of 10 journalists killed in the last six years were in the most corrupt countries scoring 45 and less on CPI.

“On average, at least one journalist was killed in a country that is highly corrupt every week. One in five journalists was killed covering a story about corruption. Sadly, justice was never served in the majority of these cases,” reads the report.

Announcing the CPI 2017 findings of Wednesday, Patricia Moreira, the Managing Director of Transparency International, said “Given current crackdowns on both civil society and media worldwide, we need to do more to protect those who speak up. No activist or reporter should have to fear for their lives when speaking out against corruption.”

Source : http://en.igihe.com/news/rwanda-ranked-least-corrupt-in-east-africa.html