Corruption

Climate finance is critical in addressing climate change because of the large-scale investments required for the climate transition. Climate finance refers to local, national or transnational financing – drawn from public, private and alternative sources of financing that seek to support mitigation and adaptation actions that will address climate change. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement call for financial assistance from Parties with more financial resources to those that are less endowed and more vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. Despite the gathering momentum when it comes to climate finance, developed nations have so far failed to meet their long-standing climate pledges. Developed countries fall significantly short of their commitment to contribute $100 billion annually to support climate actions in developing nations. There remains a substantial financial gap in climate finance in Africa, yet climate disasters cost between 5 and 15% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) each year. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the implementation of African Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) requires nearly $3 trillion, including about $2.5 trillion between 2020 and 2030. The need to fast-track climate finance is urgent and undeniable. However, Parties should also take into account the question of financial integrity in the climate transition. Transparency International defines financial integrity as “a financial system that operates in a clean, transparent and accountable way”. Tax transparency, fiscal transparency, procurement and contract transparency, and beneficial ownership transparency are prerequisites to financial integrity.

The Gabonese duffel bags of cash televised in September this year demonstrate the inadequacy of existing measures to stem state-abetted graft. The African Union’s High Level Panel (HLP) on IFFs promotes policy harmonization, however, its non-binding provisions slip towards toothlessness, given that states themselves drive SIFFs. Implementing the HLP needs muscular institutional ruptures with graft. Crucially, existing anticorruption measures are crippled by the fact that SIFFs blur the lines between licit and illicit finances. Therefore, policymakers should embed anti-corruption norms within the constitution to enable the people to revolt against enduring SIFF regimes such as the Bongo dynasty.

The exponentially growing discomfort around Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) globally is an indicator of the undesirable effects that result from the IFFs, ranging from social, economic and even political consequences. There is a general concurrence that IFFs take away substantial amounts of finances from the developing countries, which finances could otherwise be utilised in domestic investments, provision of public services such as education, security, health etc., and offsetting foreign debts. It is on this basis that discussions about IFFs in developing countries should not be postponed.

It is common knowledge that several African economies have a nagging public debt burden. However, in real terms, outside of Oceania, Africa has the lowest public debt in the world. The challenge with Africa is that most of its debt is owed to non-African creditors and the debts are contracted in foreign currency thereby exposing African countries to currency volatility. Another challenge is that these non-African creditors consider the African market as risky, thereby charging higher interest on our loans. While African countries are struggling to finance public debt which ordinarily should be within the capacity of African economies to accommodate, it is estimated that Africa loses about $140 Billion annually to corruption.

There is no gainsaying the fact that Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) constitute a major impediment to Africa’s sustainable development. In fact, IFFs have a direct impact on a country’s ability to raise, retain and mobilise its own resources to finance sustainable development. Its negative impact further includes draining a country’s foreign exchange reserves, reducing domestic resource mobilization, preventing the flow of benefits of foreign direct investment, and worsening insecurity, poverty and economic inequality.

This case has also, sadly, brought together a combination of examples of what some individuals will do for money. Driven by greed and prepared to use corruption; giving no thought to what their enrichment would mean in terms of harm for others. Others that in the present case include the people of Nigeria, already let down in so many ways over the history of this matter by a number of individuals in politics and administration whose duty it was to serve them and protect them.

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The article draws attention to the financial resources plundered in Malawi amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic and highlights the pre-existing corruption problems in Malawi and its effects on the country's global and regional economic participation. It argues that domestic systems are insufficient to root out corruption and highlights the role of international systems in addressing corruption, and calls for more investment in international enforcement in the battle against corruption in Malawi.

The purpose of my essay is to flesh out why the issue of corruption should be the preeminent foreign policy issue for the South African government – in line with the imperatives of the Constitution and furthered by the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court and other courts, as well as giving effect to its own commitment of human rights in its most recent Foreign Policy White Paper (mentioned earlier). Moreover, South Africa has ratified the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, adopted in 2003 and coming into force in 2005.

Neo colonialism as described by Ian Taylor is as valid then as it is now, but there are alternatives beyond the modern paradigm and we have to run the risk of decolonizing the academy, people are changing and fighting from other ways of life, but our academies? can you hear them? Indigenous peoples, community organizations, peasants and nature are speaking to us. The question is what language and what knowledge we will use to listen and speak them.