Akinwumi Adesina, the President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), says corruption is not peculiar to Africa but is rather a global crisis.
He noted that there are people cooking books in Europe.
Adesina disclosed this in a recent interview with the UK Guardian.
He noted that while corruption is high in Europe’s financial and economic sectors, places like Eritrea in East Africa have zero per cent corruption.
He, however, stressed that the African continent needs to continue improving accountability in public resource use.
“The global financial crisis that brought the world down in 2008 was not in Africa. We have no Wall Street. That collapse came from greed, corruption, fraud,” he said.
“You have people cooking the books in the financial industry in Europe, not Africa. Corruption is not an African issue.
“The issue is not to say that there’s none. What you have to do is to continue to improve transparency and accountability in the use of public resources.
“During my first visit to Eritrea, I was talking to UN Development Programme staff. You know what they told me? That, in Eritrea, corruption is zero per cent,” he said.
According to him, for Africa to move up the value chain, it has to place value on its raw materials, including oil and gas, minerals, metals and food.
“The issue is, we have to invest right; we have to make sure the governance environment is right; we have to make sure the incentives are right,” he said.
