World Bank on Africa: “up to 35 percent of the money the bank spends for aid projects is lost through corruption”

From all the way back in 1999 come this compelling report, in the form of transcript, of a conversation/interview with World Bank officials about understanding the nature of corruption – and how it severely limits the effectiveness of World Bank initiatives around the world.

Particularly so with regard to Uganda – and its failures in dealing with these issues – in particular contrast to neighboring Tanzania, which has engaged on anti-corruption policies from the highest levels of government on down.

The situation in 1988:

“The basic principle we are applying to what I call a learning process is that basically we don't know how to do this work. We don't know how to fight corruption. None of us. We started to realize that up to 35 percent of the money the bank spends for aid projects is lost through corruption. We know in some countries we are part of the problem, not part of the solution, which is very tricky for international civil servants. They are working very hard and they are still part of the problem.”

How to work effectively against corruption in developing countries:

“Principle number one is we only do this work when invited in. We can't come in and do this on our own. We have to be invited in and we said we want to be invited in not only by the president and the government, we want to be invited in by groups in the civil society outside the government. Principle number two is we work with a broad-based segment of society. Principle number three is we do a survey of the social problems before we start work.”

The situation in Uganda:

“At a place called the Kampala Club where all the elite drinks beer, the word there was the parliament is out of control. This is what this is all about. If you ever fight corruption in these countries, you have to increase the uncertainty for the people who are crooked. Uncertainty was certainly up, but if it was up enough we don't know.”

Was Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni unaware of the situation? He is at the center of it, according to the World Bank:

“At present, Museveni has to pull the plug on his brother who was making probably ten million dollars on army procurement. He was also buying a bank from foreigners and he bought a company and sold it within 48 hours. The president's brother was really doing a lot of things that the president probably knew about.”

What is the impact on regular people, like at the village level?

“We did a survey in Uganda last August. It was the biggest corruption survey ever. We queried 100,000 people, around 2,000 service providers and then we had 350 focus groups. If you read those focus groups about the pain at the village level. The kids are dying because they can't pay the bribes to the nurse. They lose the case because the judge is bought off. They have been beaten up by the police. There is a lot of pain among 75 or 80 percent of the people, maybe 90 percent in Africa.”

Is the World Bank able to do this on its own? Not at all, and they make that clear:

“What we're trying to do is redistribute the pain a little bit, get some pain in the small group of people who are milking the system and try to relieve a little of the pain among the people who having very, very hard times. This is where we get the participatory process. In Uganda, we have done four National Integrity workshops. We realize that the national level is a lot of talk.”

What does taking action against corruption look like in practice?

“An important area that we end up working in is public education. The second thing is prevention. The third one is institution building. What we are doing there is very different. In the past we dealt only with the government, but now we also work on building parliaments, judiciaries, private sector civil society and the media. The last thing, which is the stickiest, is the enforcement. This is not our job, although we are getting into the police. We are realizing that if you only do public education without law enforcement, you get cynicism. We have to sit down with leaders and say to them, "Okay, if you want to play ball with public education, we have to do something on this other side. Otherwise, this will create problems for you."

The conditions described here from 1999 were virtually unchanged during my visit to Uganda one year ago. It has taken six years for the Ugandan government to advance to the place where all government officials must declare their wealth and holdings – in order to stand up to audit from independent probes. The limitation on this is that it is only a snapshot from one point in time – it is neither retrospective nor an ongoing requirement in the future. And does not seem to encompass the “spreading out” of wealth among cronies and relatives beyond the reach of this regulation.

The U.S. State Department has indicated that Uganda is moving backwards on human rights, anti-corruption efforts, and development of democracy.

Corruption is as virulent and malevolent a force as Saddam’s sadism.

If the trans-Atlantic alliance has been recently repaired – and Europe is talking again with the Bush Administration – what better focus of renewal could there be than accomplishing tangible results against the pervasive influence of corruption. There can be no better place to start than focusing on Yoweri Museveni.