How countries are ranked on corruption index
Transparency International released the 2022 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) report on Tuesday, ranking South Sudan as the world’s most corrupt country.
The report implies that Juba has a lot to do to eliminate corruption owing to the repeating trend where it is ranked at the bottom with 12 points, similar to 2019.
But the question that arises is this: how does Transparency International determine the integrity levels of these countries?
How TI arrives at the conclusion
The CPI, which is the most widely used global corruption ranking in the world, measures how corrupt each country’s public sector is perceived. It sources the data from reputable organisations with no socio-political inclinations, such as the World Bank and the World Economic Forum.
Each country’s score, such as South Sudan’s, is a combination of at least three data sources drawn from 13 different corruption survey assessments on its perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 – 100 where 0 means corrupt and 100 means very clean. Notwithstanding this, the rank is therefore not as important as the score in terms of indicating the level of corruption in a particular country.
The CPI determines a country’s corruption level by measuring variables including bribery, diversion of public funds, officials using their public office for private gains without facing consequences, and the government’s ability to contain corruption in the public sector.
The CPI also measures excessive red tape in the public sector, which increases opportunities for corruption, nepotic appointments in the civil service, as well as laws ensuring that public officials must disclose their financial and potential conflicts of interest.
Other variables include legal protection for people who report cases of bribery and corruption, state capture by narrow vested interests, and access to information on public affairs/government activities.
The January 2021 TI report agrees with the findings of a 2020 USAID report which reveals how corruption is creeping into the civil society organisations in South Sudan. The report, which is titled ‘2019 Civil Society Organisation Sustainability Index’, unearths how individuals use corrupt means to siphon money from the donors, straining the relationship between the organisations and the funders.
It also agrees with many prominent South Sudanese who earlier admitted the high level of corruption in the country. The former Minister of Defence and Veteran Affairs, Kuol Manyang, pointed out that South Sudan needs to fight rampant corruption to affect development.
“All forms of corruption are contributing to fuelling violence across the country.” Our attempt to resolve the ongoing politically motivated deadly communal violence across the country is always undermined by corrupt practises such as the supply of funds, arms, and ammunition to communities to perpetrate deadly violence by some elites,” activist Edmund Yakani, CEPO Executive Director.
It was a slight drop from its highest tally ever since independence in two consecutive years, 2014 and 2015, with a 15-point score.
Other rankings
A war-torn Somalia, Syria both scored 13 out of 100 points, unlike South Sudan, which got only 11 points.
At the top of the list are New Zealand and Denmark, which have 88 points each. Finland, Switzerland, Singapore, and Sweden follow with 85 points as the most accountable countries. The USA comes in at position 67, while South Africa opens the list for the African countries at position 69 with a score of 44.
