It is an open secret that corruption has got a serious effect everywhere, be it in companies, churches, heath centres and on a National level. Above all, corruption has seriously contributed to development stagnation on African countries. So far over 500 billion Us dollars has been donated to Africa in form of aid, so that Africa can develop but it has failed. The answer to this development stalemate is simple, CORRUPTION.
I want to focus on the effects of corruption on African development. When we look closely to the most developed western countries, we will realise that no one gave them aid to develop. But they used the resources they had and accountability to achieve this. The first effect of corruption is “squandering of resources irresponsibly without thinking of the next generation”. The money which you have worked for is handled with conscious, and it gives you the hunger to invest it for the future generation. Easy money which comes to African countries in form of aid, is eaten up by hungry and corrupt African leaders. Which in return has a serious impact on the African development. This point can be proven by looking at half of the African leaders who go into government with an average income, but become the richest people in their respective countries after two years of Office. There is no better explanation of this income transformation other than corruption.
This can be better proven by looking at the following example...
Barack Obama the former president of USA has a net worth of $12.2 Million dollars, and David Cameron, the former British Prime Minister has a net worth of $50 Million dollars. These former leaders of two great nations are not even in the top hundred richest people in their countries, the reason is simple; they don’t practise corruption or if they do it's on a fractionate scale compared to African leaders. We can have a better comparison if we compare the net worth of these two western leaders coming from the richest countries on the globe against the net worth of two African leaders coming from the poorest countries on the global.
Yahya Jammeh, the former Gambian leader has a net worth of $1.8 Billion dollars and King Swati has a net worth of $200 Million dollars. These are presidents coming from the countries who receive aid from the two Western countries whose presidents have a lower income than them. How did they get their income? Your guess is as good as mine...
Corruption has contributed to the inefficiency and lack of business growth in Africa. We have seen people paying a 'little something' just to get served fast at different institutions, like road traffic, Banks, Immigration departments, just to mention a few.
We have seen accountants sitting on invoices deliberately so that beneficiaries should give them a little something to pay it faster, we have seen insurance companies closing due to higher numbers of claims, fabricated by the employees and beneficiaries.
This is corruption and has led to the failure of business growth.
Stop corruption, reject corruption and resist corruption.
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