The East African Bribery Index 2012: Bribery levels remain high in Kenya

Bribery prevalence in Kenya remains high as the country moved from fourth place recorded in 2011 to third in the 2012 East African Bribery Index (EABI) with an aggregate index value of 29.5% up from the 28.8% recorded last year.

Uganda registered the highest bribery levels in the region with a value of 40.7%. Burundi, the worst ranked country in 2011 recorded a significantly lower index of 18.8%, down from 37% recorded last year. Tanzania recorded 39.1% respectively while Rwanda remains the least bribery-prone country in the region with an aggregate index of 2.5%.

Methodology

The East African Bribery Index, conducted since 2009, is a governance tool developed to measure bribery levels in the private and public sectors in the region.

The survey recorded responses on bribery from 9,303 respondents across the five East African countries, picked through simple random sampling based on population proportion to size across various administrative regions. Field data collection across the five countries was conducted between

March and May of 2012. 2,017 people were sampled in Kenya 44% of them being female respondents, 1,319 in Burundi, 2,382 in Rwanda, 2,136 in Tanzania and 1,449 Uganda.

Respondents were asked to trace bribery experiences while seeking services in the preceding 12 months. Specifically, whether a bribe was demanded or expected, whether the respondent paid the bribe as well as whether the service was offered after paying or refusing to pay the bribe

Unlike in the past where the EABI ranked institutions, the 2012 survey recorded and compared bribery tendencies across key public sectors including medical services, education, water, judiciary, the police and civil registration across the East African region.

KEY FINDINGS:

Aggregate Index – East Africa

The aggregate index combines Likelihood, prevalence, impact of bribery, share of bribe and the average amount were combined into one indicator scaled from 0 to 100 (with 100 being the worst score).

All the Police institutions in the region were in the top 10 positions of the East African aggregate index with Land services in Kenya (fourth), Judiciary in Burundi, Tanzania and Uganda ( fifth seventh and eighth respectively) and land services in Burundi ( tenth) taking up the remaining five positions.

Aggregate Index – Kenya

Kenya Police had the worst outlook in Kenya followed by land services, judiciary, and registry & licensing services respectively while city & local councils closed out the top five positions of the index.

Corruption perception

Rwanda retained the most positive outlook with only 2% of respondents describing their country as extremely corrupt compared to 48% in Tanzania, 44% in Kenya, 51% in Uganda and 41% in Burundi.

Rwanda also registered the best future outlook with 80.1% observing that corruption levels will decrease in the next one year. Ugandan respondents had the worst future viewpoint with 50.4% observing that corruption levels will rise in the coming one year. 31% of respondents from Kenya said they expected corruption to decrease in the next 12 months

Corruption reporting

Corruption reporting was low in all five countries. Kenya had the lowest percentage of respondents indicating willingness to report corruption (5.5%) while Rwanda had the highest (15.5%) followed by Tanzania (11.1%), Burundi (10.5%) and Uganda (7.8%) respectively.

Next steps

The East African bribery index is a snapshot of corruption in the region or in a country and is not institution-specific. Therefore, in order to understand the extent and scope of corruption in an institution, TI national chapters and partners in the five East African countries can be sought to conduct an institutional integrity study to identify systematic weaknesses that may predispose the institution to corrupt practices. TI national chapters and partners in the five East African countries welcome partnerships with public institutions aimed at comprehensively identifying and strengthening internal systems and procedures to curb corruption

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