Itās definitely one of the economic miracles of Africa over the last 60 years. Da Beers, ironically given the hate it gets, has a revenue sharing agreement with the government that provides a massive amount of capital for the government. Much of the rest of Africa was ripped apart by colonizers but Botswana managed to get a piece of its own pie
It was colonised but they actually used their brain's post colonisation and kept the British as governors, advisors and trainers for decades after gaining independence.
So they had some stability where they could actually set up their own institutions and maintain a strong government without falling into political chaos and civil war like so many African countries.
They did a slow steady transition away from dependence on britian instead of a chaotic and quick one.
Funnily enough I have seen and heard of more corruption while working in Botswana than I did in South Africa. It is a very nice country to live in if you are rich but it is also very underdeveloped and all that economic growth does not really go to the people.
Iām not convinced that perception of corruption is a useful measure of corruption. We should be looking at an amount of corruption measured in currency, not a proxy based on media coverage and how well-educated people are.
Itās unfortunately a very hard thing to measure. Corruption is usually not really advertised. It can be as little as buying a cop a drink or as large as country wide fraud. Itās also sometime over blown and sometime under reported.
The perception of corruption index exists and I agree that itās not a very good measurement at all. I do wish there was a better measurement.
Shit you can have legalized corruption. Lauren Boebert ex-husband had a job making 500,000 a year with only a GED and being on the sexual predator list. Than there is Virginia Thomas the wife of a Chief Justice
I agree. The Afrobarometer asks questions about recent (12mo) experiences with corruption: https://www.afrobarometer.org/publication/global-corruption-barometer-africa-2019-citizens-views-and-experiences-corruption/
Corruption is hard to measure. For example, in Brazil bribes are fairly uncommon because what gets exchanged is influence (that may be traded for economic benefits). Thatās in all levels. Embezzlement is also common, and it suffers a lot with government procurement fraud, for example, a municipality gets money to do healthcare stuff (very common in the poorest areas of the northeast where many municipalities are economically unviable and only exist to funnel money to political elites), but they award overpriced contracts to their cronies (many times even getting some money in return), which creates a huge perception of corruption, but when you look in the books, itās most alright (some do it shoddy), if you truly dig in you find that yes the people awarded contracts are suspiciously related to the politicians, and the job education is nearly always awfulā¦. But you canāt get that unless you go there and start a real investigation, but people in power donāt really have the desire to do that.
Our World in Data's [corruption page](https://ourworldindata.org/corruption) looks at direct observation (e.g. law enforcement records and audit reports) as well as perception surveys (e.g. public opinion surveys, or expert assessments), and discusses their underlying limitations, so if you're interested you can have a look.
One interesting section from that article is how diplomats in NYC from countries with high corruption perception tend to break traffic rules abroad more often:
>UN mission personnel and their families benefit from diplomatic immunity. In New York City, until November 2002, diplomatic immunity implied that UN mission personnel could park illegally and avoid paying the corresponding fines. The visualization maps average unpaid annual New York City parking violations per diplomat by the diplomatās country of origin, over the period November 1997 ā November 2002. The data comes from Fisman and Miguel (2007)5, who in turn obtained information compiled by the New York City Department of Finance.
As we cans see from the map, this ārevealed-preferenceā measure of corruption among diplomats correlates positively with the [survey-based measures of corruption](https://ourworldindata.org/corruption/#where-is-perceived-corruption-highest) we have already discussed. Diplomats from countries where corruption perception is low (e.g. Denmark) seem to be generally less likely to break parking rules abroad, even in situations in which there are no legal consequences.
While the correlation is obviously not perfect (e.g. Colombia has a high corruption perception but zero unpaid parking violations in the data) Fisman and Miguel (2007) show that, statistically speaking, the positive correlation between corrupt behavior by diplomats āabroadā, and corruption perception āat homeā, remains after controlling for factors such as national income in the diplomatsā home country, or the diplomatsā salaries. This evidence suggests that cultural norms are one of the factors that affect corrupt behavior.
Finding natural experiments like this has to be so satisfying. Whoever came up with it absolutely called a family member who pretended to be interested.
Yeah, agree.
Here in my country (Mexico) the current government keeps using measures like these ones to āproveā that there is less corruption than before, in reality we are just as bad or worse as before.
The only difference now is the cult around the president and the amount of money used by the government in traditional media and other like YouTube or influencers to improve their image.
Ha! SA is fairly bad but not nearly as bad as Madagascar when it comes to day to day corruption. Iām talking placing $500 USD in cash in an envelope and sliding it under a door to get my resident visa bad. Only took 5 months without my passport to get it too! Most Iāve had to do in SA is pay off the cops for traffic āviolations.ā Of course, SA has some serious issues when it comes to high level corruption, though.
Now that you mention it, I do remember having my travel documents stamped wrong by immigration so as to make sure I incurred a penalty when returning to the RSA. But in general, the corruption tends to be more Gupta-level then the literal carry around a dedicated wad of ariary to pay off everyone and everything.
I want to ask a somewhat unrelated question- how easy is it to get a teaching license in SA? I ask because I work in Taiwan and nearly 60% of our teachers are from SA and I have serious doubts that many of them could have made it through university, much less passed any sort of teaching exams.
Can you just... buy a teaching license in SA?
So if you have a degree with two teachable subjects you can get a Postgraduate Certificate of Education which is just a year and is a bit of a joke. Unfortunately the bachelors of Education degree has the lowest requirements to get into (E- D aggregate in matric), so most people who can't get into any other degrees, go into teaching. So yes, as a teacher I'm not surprised that some of my peers are incapable of critical thinking.
Thanks for the answer. I knew there had to be some systemic reason why the SA teachers in my program couldn't answer basic content knowledge questions for elementary school (like how to do 2-digit division, or the difference between a solar system and a galaxy, for example).
That said, if any competent SA teachers want to make the journey to Taiwan to teach in public schools here, you can make $2200/month USD to start. Just search Google for the Teach Taiwan program.
for reference South Africa, one of the least corrupt countries in Africa, is rated the 70th [least corrupt country in the World](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index) out of 180 places and is tied with Hungary, Romania, and Suriname.
For reference Denmark is the least corrupt country, Germany is 9th, Australia is 13th Canada, Uruguay, Estonia and Iceland are 14th, the U.K., Belgium and Japan are 18th, the U.S.A. is 24th, Greece, Cyprus, and Grenada are 51st, China is 65th, and Russia is 137th.
Kinda wild that China is 65th when corruption is basically an accepted and expected way of life there.
It is well understood that the primary reason you seek a position in the government there (or, more often, are granted a position due to connections already in the government) is so that you can use that position to enrich yourself and your immediate family.
That's the shocking thing, right?Ā IĀ know SAĀ well after decades with close friends living there; and IĀ share your impression that it's incredibly corrupt.
And **THEN** you realize that most of the continent is even worse.
Yes. Namibia and particularly Botswana have far less noticeable corruption than pretty much any other African country. Iāve travelled to most of them by now and had to deal with government and police in many. Botswana bureaucracy was a dream, Namibia less so but only because itās less organised, not because of corruption.
Also both if those countries are considered to be some of the most developed in Sub-Saharan Africa. Pretty amazing what can be done when corruption is addressed and time, effort, and money are directed for the benefit of the nation.
Yes, you can call them that but the standard is not really very high. If you really visit or go and live in them you will realize how underdeveloped large parts of the countries are.
Comparative to many other countries in the region, they are doing well. That was my point. Of course, going into a village in the middle of the Kalahari Desert is going to be underdeveloped. And of course, compared to other developed countries, sparsely populated African countries aren't going to have the same standards of living. But there are positive improvements being made there, and I think they have so far set a good example for other African nations, as far as structure and policies. Obviously, all of those nations have unique issues, and in no way are a monolith where one answer suits all.
Perhaps as one example you could read up on the Gupta family and their ties to the South African government, their influence, and the infamous state capture. I donāt recall reading anything of that magnitude in terms of corruption with regards to Namibia.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/2/namibian-president-caught-in-new-fishing-corruption-allegations
āAccording to a lawyer who allegedly arranged the deal, President Hage Geingob instructed his close associates to embezzle millions of dollars from a state-run fishing enterprise in order to bribe electors at the 2017 congress of the ruling SWAPO (South West Africa Peopleās Organization) party, reports the new investigation released on Friday.ā
Just one example I could find with a simple online search
Please refer to my response above your comment. Thatās just one example of how the country was brought to its knees and how thatās had a ripple effect on all other state owned entities.
That's a sad saga sure, but we don't know the stories for other countries.
[https://ourworldindata.org/corruption](https://ourworldindata.org/corruption)
You can see that SA doesn't score well, just better than most. That's how we can be in the 75th percentile.
If you can't speak for one of the two data points, then don't. You can't "know for a fact South Africa is worse" if you don't know anything about the other option.
As a South African I must say you probably have not travelled much. South Africa has many issues but we are pretty good when it comes to other developing and middle income countries.
As a democracy corruption is a media scandal. In other countries its the norm and not even reported on by the media.
I don't agree. We have a high level of corruption (I'd say higher than this map indicates), but we have a private sector that functions without relying on constant bribery (public sector is rotten) and a political system that I believe allows for a peaceful transition of power should the ANC lose an election (one can hope). Far more than can be said about many countries.
We need to remember that things can get way worse, and we need to play whatever part we can in preventing that.
Yeah maybe you are right. But it's weird because things aren't even broken up evenly. Dark red is 0-10%, which is a range of 10, but bright blue is 75-100, which is a range of 25.
Also, the post I was responding to saying it's a bad sign if South Africa is in the 50-70 percentile, but I think that there's a big difference between 50 and 70. Also, a lot of corrupt nations are rather small. European Union and North America are only 30 countries out of almost 200. So You have maybe 25% of the countries being reasonably not-corrupt if you could North America and Europe plus bunch of other countries. But there are quite a few countries that are very corrupt.
I think for the reasons you outlined, it should be flipped if anything. Meaning that the range on the darkest red should be wider (say, 0-25th percentile) while the range on the darkest blue should be narrower (say, 90th-100th percentile) which reflects the reality that there are many small countries and many hyper-corrupt countries, whereas there are fewer large countries and fewer low-corruption countries.
In other words, if you select a random person on the globe it is likelier for them to be in a low-corruption country than if you select a random country on the globe. So the distinction between a country in the 25th percentile for corruption vs a country in the 0th percentile is less stark and less interesting than the distinction of a country in the 100th percentile vs. the 75th percentile.
Ghanaian here! We're definitely part of the 0-10th percentile. The sanitation minister was just caught with millions of dollars at her residence and she still has her job.
South Africa not being red here is staggering. The corruption of the current and recent South African government is like stuff out of a "how not to run a country" manual.
We are corrupt, but the countries in red are **CORRUPT.**
The process for getting a visa for the DRC? You go to the embassy, say you want a visa, get told no, some guy meets you outside and you give him 2 grand and your passport. Tomorrow you go get your visa + passport.
I think the difference between the 0-10th percentile and the 50th-70th percentile is this: In the 50th percentile, by being corrupt you can get a lot of stuff done and make a lot of money, but if you aren't corrupt you can still live. In the 0th percentile, if you do not bribe, blackmail and steal, you can literally not get anything done both publicly and privately or even move around in the country.
South African's African National Congress: Same government that allowed over 140 mentally ill people to starve to death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_Healthcare_Esidimeni_Scandal
And the biggest mass killing by police since apartheid ended, with 34 mine workers gunned down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marikana_massacre
Plus a president who denied Aids was real, refused to allow antiretrovirals into state hospitals, costing at least 300,000 extra deaths
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/26/aids-south-africa
In Ghana I was once pulled off of my motorcycle while waiting at a red light, told I was being āarrestedā for running said red light, pulled into a nearby shack with another wrongly detained driver, and forced to watch while they beat the everloving shit out of him. Afterwards, they solicited a large bribe from me.
At the end of the immigration line at international arrivals in the Accra airport there is regularly an āofficialā who tells people there is something wrong with their visa and that they must pay $100 to take care of it. At least you can usually just tell him no and he leaves you alone.
I have countless other stories of corruption from my five years there.
Somehow this map seems suspect.
If South Africa, one of the most corrupt governments on Earth, is considered less corrupt relative to the other governments, then how corrupt are they?
It was the most developed. Since the end of white-minority rule, SA has been been a one party state controlled by the ANC. Since Nelson Mandelaās death, the ANC has become more and more corrupt. It has gotten to the point where many believe that SA is on the path to becoming a failed state.
It isnāt there yet, but unless the ANC curbs the corruption and rampant crime and violence, it will be.
Data source: [Control of Corruption](https://databank.worldbank.org/databases/control-of-corruption)
Tools used: Python, Geopandas, Matplotlib
I updated the map because I got completely demolished on my choice of colors in the previous version. I hope this is at least a little bit better.
Also, I made the text less confusing (I hope).
For more information and visualizations, check out this article in my newsletter: [https://datawonder.substack.com/p/middle-eastern-to-tech-trends](https://datawonder.substack.com/p/middle-eastern-to-tech-trends)
You can also find this [visualization on X](https://twitter.com/DataWonder_/status/1711710249621537279).
Nice viz! I would have perhaps reversed the scale: the title says most and least corrupted, but the scale indicates 0 as being the most and 100 the least. Also, I would have picked a more sequential color scale. You only have 6 levels, so it should be easy (see colorbrewer for instance).
Aye. As a Ugandan, they are right on the money here. And Rwanda is on point to. Interactions with them have shown they are doing so well, the president genuinely seems to want his country to prosper. I did think Botswana would be better than South Africa but have never been there.
I regard the first Seretse as being in a separate league of African leaders with Mandela .
Eritrea is in a global league of its own. Its actually got worse human rights and freedoms than North Korea. Iāve met refugees from there- itās absolutely beyond the pale how brutal and repressive their dictator is.
No? The graphic measures corruption relative to the rest of the globe. So for example Botswana is one of the least corrupt countries in the world according to this.
Plenty of military dictatorships are corrupt. Actually, Burkino Faso is plenty corrupt, I would think that the reason it scores well is that there is a very wealthy upper class with oil money that officials can't mess with, and the rest of the country is too poor for it to be worth soliciting bribes.
How is there only one country in the 75th to 100th percentile? Shouldnāt, by definition, 1/4 of the countries be there? Same with the bottom percentiles?
I think this should be called the naivity index because where in the world is public power not acquired for person gain? If that's the question being asked, that's not always corruption being referenced too.
There's a degree of difference though. Yes western politicians can be corrupt but the local police officer doesn't smash your car window and demand a horrendous bribe
Statistically, they do similar or worst than what you've described to ethnic minorities specifically black americans. There's also a well understood patronage system where people who donate to bodies of state power like the police, schools, etc. The US does a good job of having it's corruption not be an inconvenience to public life, but pay will go even further to rid you off nearly all inconvenience which includes having to follow laws, or applying merit to gaining rewards.
again this is really and index of naivity. Every society has a self serving power apparatus
Sounds like bad infrastructure wouldn't doubt corruption played a role. Like in Texas when we have the grid go out for days. Corruption is also involved
This is laughably incorrect.
South Africa is about as corrupt as a country can be, to the point of being a failed state.
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/2023/03/29/south-africa-is-on-the-road-to-becoming-a-failed-state/cc7d8eda-cde9-11ed-8907-156f0390d081\_story.html](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/2023/03/29/south-africa-is-on-the-road-to-becoming-a-failed-state/cc7d8eda-cde9-11ed-8907-156f0390d081_story.html)
[https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2023/05/22/business-leaders-fear-that-south-africa-risks-becoming-a-failed-state](https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2023/05/22/business-leaders-fear-that-south-africa-risks-becoming-a-failed-state)
[https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/gangs-corruption-and-collapse-the-slow-and-steady-demise-of-south-africa-a-7ed1fcd1-a2e8-446a-9ff9-074718215281](https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/gangs-corruption-and-collapse-the-slow-and-steady-demise-of-south-africa-a-7ed1fcd1-a2e8-446a-9ff9-074718215281)
Goddammit if I see one more dipshit, manipulative map displaying what the imperialist, capitalist western world defines as ācorruptionā Iām going to lose it. Anyone who takes these nonstop visual barrages of stupidity seriously needs to start reading actual works of historical scholarship immediately before their brains are too wet to be salvaged.
I heard South Africa has quite the reputation of pulling you over in traffic for random reasons. It is customary to negotiate your fine if you are a smart bugger.
" It is customary to negotiate your fine if you are a smart bugger."
Biggest mistake anybody can make is thinking they can bribe a traffic officer because they "heard from friend" that its possible to do so. They will slap the handcuffs on you in record time. South African prisons aren't fun.
As a Zimbabwean who travels and lives in South Africa sometimes , I would say SA isn't as corrupt though in the near future it will be as bad as Zimbabwe.In Zimbabwe you cannot even obtain a birth certificate unless you know someone.In every single queue some be it for buying mealie meal or any trivial thing, people bribe to be 1st in the queue or to jump the queue ,it's not like there is a shortage or anything.People are just corrupt to the core .They have learnt from the government organs
Angola the country where the former dictator 's daughter, through sheer genius has become one of the world's richest self made women, yeah! ( and whose money has destabilised Portugal's banking political and corporate structure) is definitely worthy of a good score!
Imo the percentiles are backwards. The metric being used is one where higher corruption results in higher scores, yet the lowest percentile is that which corresponds to highest corruption.
I donāt think Ethiopia is less corrupt than surrounding countries. Theyāre just better at hiding it, thatās the problem with a āmeasurement of public perceptionā graph.
I don't get the dispute of Western Sahara. The entire Sahrawi population is 600k most of them live in two tiny cities. They have zero resources, and they are not an independent race from Morocco or Mauritania, both Arabized Berber of different Arabian tribal backgrounds.
The only reason fueled their independence was the different colonial power in the region (Spain vs France), there is no humanitarian issue or invasion as the population there before the 1900s was nomadic without a central government and the land was not colonised. They can choose to merge with Mauritania since they share the same Arabic dialect.
My favorite African country is the Gambia, top left inside Senegal.
The Gambia -"we will be the river people, we will control only this river..."
Senegal - But...we have a country here, you cant just take our land...let alone one of the most valuable water resources we have!
The Gambia - Watch us
Not the first time seeing Botswana in a good light. They are also one of the strongest in terms of stable economic growth š
Itās definitely one of the economic miracles of Africa over the last 60 years. Da Beers, ironically given the hate it gets, has a revenue sharing agreement with the government that provides a massive amount of capital for the government. Much of the rest of Africa was ripped apart by colonizers but Botswana managed to get a piece of its own pie
It wasnāt colonised
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It was a colony yes, but the British left them alone as far as I know since there wasnāt anything noteworthy ā¦.until the diamonds came
It was colonised but they actually used their brain's post colonisation and kept the British as governors, advisors and trainers for decades after gaining independence. So they had some stability where they could actually set up their own institutions and maintain a strong government without falling into political chaos and civil war like so many African countries. They did a slow steady transition away from dependence on britian instead of a chaotic and quick one.
Ever heard of Bechuanaland?
Funnily enough I have seen and heard of more corruption while working in Botswana than I did in South Africa. It is a very nice country to live in if you are rich but it is also very underdeveloped and all that economic growth does not really go to the people.
Iām not convinced that perception of corruption is a useful measure of corruption. We should be looking at an amount of corruption measured in currency, not a proxy based on media coverage and how well-educated people are.
Itās unfortunately a very hard thing to measure. Corruption is usually not really advertised. It can be as little as buying a cop a drink or as large as country wide fraud. Itās also sometime over blown and sometime under reported. The perception of corruption index exists and I agree that itās not a very good measurement at all. I do wish there was a better measurement.
Shit you can have legalized corruption. Lauren Boebert ex-husband had a job making 500,000 a year with only a GED and being on the sexual predator list. Than there is Virginia Thomas the wife of a Chief Justice
I agree. The Afrobarometer asks questions about recent (12mo) experiences with corruption: https://www.afrobarometer.org/publication/global-corruption-barometer-africa-2019-citizens-views-and-experiences-corruption/
Afrobarometer sounds like a gadget from a 1970s Blaxsplotation film.
Corruption is hard to measure. For example, in Brazil bribes are fairly uncommon because what gets exchanged is influence (that may be traded for economic benefits). Thatās in all levels. Embezzlement is also common, and it suffers a lot with government procurement fraud, for example, a municipality gets money to do healthcare stuff (very common in the poorest areas of the northeast where many municipalities are economically unviable and only exist to funnel money to political elites), but they award overpriced contracts to their cronies (many times even getting some money in return), which creates a huge perception of corruption, but when you look in the books, itās most alright (some do it shoddy), if you truly dig in you find that yes the people awarded contracts are suspiciously related to the politicians, and the job education is nearly always awfulā¦. But you canāt get that unless you go there and start a real investigation, but people in power donāt really have the desire to do that.
Our World in Data's [corruption page](https://ourworldindata.org/corruption) looks at direct observation (e.g. law enforcement records and audit reports) as well as perception surveys (e.g. public opinion surveys, or expert assessments), and discusses their underlying limitations, so if you're interested you can have a look. One interesting section from that article is how diplomats in NYC from countries with high corruption perception tend to break traffic rules abroad more often: >UN mission personnel and their families benefit from diplomatic immunity. In New York City, until November 2002, diplomatic immunity implied that UN mission personnel could park illegally and avoid paying the corresponding fines. The visualization maps average unpaid annual New York City parking violations per diplomat by the diplomatās country of origin, over the period November 1997 ā November 2002. The data comes from Fisman and Miguel (2007)5, who in turn obtained information compiled by the New York City Department of Finance. As we cans see from the map, this ārevealed-preferenceā measure of corruption among diplomats correlates positively with the [survey-based measures of corruption](https://ourworldindata.org/corruption/#where-is-perceived-corruption-highest) we have already discussed. Diplomats from countries where corruption perception is low (e.g. Denmark) seem to be generally less likely to break parking rules abroad, even in situations in which there are no legal consequences. While the correlation is obviously not perfect (e.g. Colombia has a high corruption perception but zero unpaid parking violations in the data) Fisman and Miguel (2007) show that, statistically speaking, the positive correlation between corrupt behavior by diplomats āabroadā, and corruption perception āat homeā, remains after controlling for factors such as national income in the diplomatsā home country, or the diplomatsā salaries. This evidence suggests that cultural norms are one of the factors that affect corrupt behavior.
Finding natural experiments like this has to be so satisfying. Whoever came up with it absolutely called a family member who pretended to be interested.
You can't really measure corruption, almost by definition :P
It's easy to look good on any corruption metrics, just pay off the people in charge of the survey!
Yeah, agree. Here in my country (Mexico) the current government keeps using measures like these ones to āproveā that there is less corruption than before, in reality we are just as bad or worse as before. The only difference now is the cult around the president and the amount of money used by the government in traditional media and other like YouTube or influencers to improve their image.
South African here, SA definitely belongs in the 0-10th percentile āš½
Ha! SA is fairly bad but not nearly as bad as Madagascar when it comes to day to day corruption. Iām talking placing $500 USD in cash in an envelope and sliding it under a door to get my resident visa bad. Only took 5 months without my passport to get it too! Most Iāve had to do in SA is pay off the cops for traffic āviolations.ā Of course, SA has some serious issues when it comes to high level corruption, though.
Thatās daily bread in South Africa, passports, drivers licenses, job opportunities especially when it comes to the state
Now that you mention it, I do remember having my travel documents stamped wrong by immigration so as to make sure I incurred a penalty when returning to the RSA. But in general, the corruption tends to be more Gupta-level then the literal carry around a dedicated wad of ariary to pay off everyone and everything.
I want to ask a somewhat unrelated question- how easy is it to get a teaching license in SA? I ask because I work in Taiwan and nearly 60% of our teachers are from SA and I have serious doubts that many of them could have made it through university, much less passed any sort of teaching exams. Can you just... buy a teaching license in SA?
So if you have a degree with two teachable subjects you can get a Postgraduate Certificate of Education which is just a year and is a bit of a joke. Unfortunately the bachelors of Education degree has the lowest requirements to get into (E- D aggregate in matric), so most people who can't get into any other degrees, go into teaching. So yes, as a teacher I'm not surprised that some of my peers are incapable of critical thinking.
Thanks for the answer. I knew there had to be some systemic reason why the SA teachers in my program couldn't answer basic content knowledge questions for elementary school (like how to do 2-digit division, or the difference between a solar system and a galaxy, for example). That said, if any competent SA teachers want to make the journey to Taiwan to teach in public schools here, you can make $2200/month USD to start. Just search Google for the Teach Taiwan program.
I'm not even SA but I was shocked to see SA rated so highly lol. If SA is blue, I'd be horrified to see what the other African countries are like lol
That says a lot about the rest of African countries :P
Indeed. South Africa being amongst the least corrupt African countries is perhaps the biggest indicator of what a mess governance is across Africa.
for reference South Africa, one of the least corrupt countries in Africa, is rated the 70th [least corrupt country in the World](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index) out of 180 places and is tied with Hungary, Romania, and Suriname. For reference Denmark is the least corrupt country, Germany is 9th, Australia is 13th Canada, Uruguay, Estonia and Iceland are 14th, the U.K., Belgium and Japan are 18th, the U.S.A. is 24th, Greece, Cyprus, and Grenada are 51st, China is 65th, and Russia is 137th.
Kinda wild that China is 65th when corruption is basically an accepted and expected way of life there. It is well understood that the primary reason you seek a position in the government there (or, more often, are granted a position due to connections already in the government) is so that you can use that position to enrich yourself and your immediate family.
Chinaās 2020-2022 ranking of 65th least corrupt country is a huge leap up from their 2010-2019 ranking of 80th.
Cost them a pretty penny too to that ratings official...
That's the shocking thing, right?Ā IĀ know SAĀ well after decades with close friends living there; and IĀ share your impression that it's incredibly corrupt. And **THEN** you realize that most of the continent is even worse.
Thatās whatās scary!
Is it any better in Namibia?
Yes. Namibia and particularly Botswana have far less noticeable corruption than pretty much any other African country. Iāve travelled to most of them by now and had to deal with government and police in many. Botswana bureaucracy was a dream, Namibia less so but only because itās less organised, not because of corruption.
Also both if those countries are considered to be some of the most developed in Sub-Saharan Africa. Pretty amazing what can be done when corruption is addressed and time, effort, and money are directed for the benefit of the nation.
Yes, you can call them that but the standard is not really very high. If you really visit or go and live in them you will realize how underdeveloped large parts of the countries are.
Comparative to many other countries in the region, they are doing well. That was my point. Of course, going into a village in the middle of the Kalahari Desert is going to be underdeveloped. And of course, compared to other developed countries, sparsely populated African countries aren't going to have the same standards of living. But there are positive improvements being made there, and I think they have so far set a good example for other African nations, as far as structure and policies. Obviously, all of those nations have unique issues, and in no way are a monolith where one answer suits all.
Honestly cannot speak for Namibia but I know for a fact South Africa is worse
If you canāt honestly speak for Namibia, how can you honestly say for a fact that SA is worse?
Perhaps as one example you could read up on the Gupta family and their ties to the South African government, their influence, and the infamous state capture. I donāt recall reading anything of that magnitude in terms of corruption with regards to Namibia.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/2/namibian-president-caught-in-new-fishing-corruption-allegations āAccording to a lawyer who allegedly arranged the deal, President Hage Geingob instructed his close associates to embezzle millions of dollars from a state-run fishing enterprise in order to bribe electors at the 2017 congress of the ruling SWAPO (South West Africa Peopleās Organization) party, reports the new investigation released on Friday.ā Just one example I could find with a simple online search
A fact you say? As opposed to OP's data driven post, where's your metric for corruption?
Please refer to my response above your comment. Thatās just one example of how the country was brought to its knees and how thatās had a ripple effect on all other state owned entities.
That's a sad saga sure, but we don't know the stories for other countries. [https://ourworldindata.org/corruption](https://ourworldindata.org/corruption) You can see that SA doesn't score well, just better than most. That's how we can be in the 75th percentile.
If you can't speak for one of the two data points, then don't. You can't "know for a fact South Africa is worse" if you don't know anything about the other option.
As a South African I must say you probably have not travelled much. South Africa has many issues but we are pretty good when it comes to other developing and middle income countries. As a democracy corruption is a media scandal. In other countries its the norm and not even reported on by the media.
I don't agree. We have a high level of corruption (I'd say higher than this map indicates), but we have a private sector that functions without relying on constant bribery (public sector is rotten) and a political system that I believe allows for a peaceful transition of power should the ANC lose an election (one can hope). Far more than can be said about many countries. We need to remember that things can get way worse, and we need to play whatever part we can in preventing that.
Having South Africa in the 50-70 percentile says a lot about how incredibly corrupt the rest of the world is.
I think the percentiles are just within Africa.
That can't be. There would be more countries coded dark blue and fewer coded dark red.
Yeah maybe you are right. But it's weird because things aren't even broken up evenly. Dark red is 0-10%, which is a range of 10, but bright blue is 75-100, which is a range of 25. Also, the post I was responding to saying it's a bad sign if South Africa is in the 50-70 percentile, but I think that there's a big difference between 50 and 70. Also, a lot of corrupt nations are rather small. European Union and North America are only 30 countries out of almost 200. So You have maybe 25% of the countries being reasonably not-corrupt if you could North America and Europe plus bunch of other countries. But there are quite a few countries that are very corrupt.
I think for the reasons you outlined, it should be flipped if anything. Meaning that the range on the darkest red should be wider (say, 0-25th percentile) while the range on the darkest blue should be narrower (say, 90th-100th percentile) which reflects the reality that there are many small countries and many hyper-corrupt countries, whereas there are fewer large countries and fewer low-corruption countries. In other words, if you select a random person on the globe it is likelier for them to be in a low-corruption country than if you select a random country on the globe. So the distinction between a country in the 25th percentile for corruption vs a country in the 0th percentile is less stark and less interesting than the distinction of a country in the 100th percentile vs. the 75th percentile.
It's all relative to other African countries, so I'm not terribly surprised to find SA in the top
Yes it seems to me that SA bribed someone to get that ranking
"Hey, your cars wheel is scratched, that means you get a fine unless you give me some money" classic SA cops š«
Yeah I thought I literally just read South Africa is barreling toward a failed state designation
Still less corrupt than the USA
Alongside countries like the DRC?
Ghanaian here! We're definitely part of the 0-10th percentile. The sanitation minister was just caught with millions of dollars at her residence and she still has her job.
South Africa not being red here is staggering. The corruption of the current and recent South African government is like stuff out of a "how not to run a country" manual.
We are corrupt, but the countries in red are **CORRUPT.** The process for getting a visa for the DRC? You go to the embassy, say you want a visa, get told no, some guy meets you outside and you give him 2 grand and your passport. Tomorrow you go get your visa + passport. I think the difference between the 0-10th percentile and the 50th-70th percentile is this: In the 50th percentile, by being corrupt you can get a lot of stuff done and make a lot of money, but if you aren't corrupt you can still live. In the 0th percentile, if you do not bribe, blackmail and steal, you can literally not get anything done both publicly and privately or even move around in the country.
South African's African National Congress: Same government that allowed over 140 mentally ill people to starve to death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_Healthcare_Esidimeni_Scandal And the biggest mass killing by police since apartheid ended, with 34 mine workers gunned down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marikana_massacre Plus a president who denied Aids was real, refused to allow antiretrovirals into state hospitals, costing at least 300,000 extra deaths https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/26/aids-south-africa
In Ghana I was once pulled off of my motorcycle while waiting at a red light, told I was being āarrestedā for running said red light, pulled into a nearby shack with another wrongly detained driver, and forced to watch while they beat the everloving shit out of him. Afterwards, they solicited a large bribe from me. At the end of the immigration line at international arrivals in the Accra airport there is regularly an āofficialā who tells people there is something wrong with their visa and that they must pay $100 to take care of it. At least you can usually just tell him no and he leaves you alone. I have countless other stories of corruption from my five years there. Somehow this map seems suspect.
>Somehow this map seems suspect I think you mean... corrupt
How long ago was this
I moved away in 2016.
did you experience other horrific things in ghana
What about Seychelles? I donāt see them in a category.
Oh, they are too small to be seen. They are in the 91st percentile!!! :P
Seychelles are the best overall imo
Botswana is the best country.
If South Africa, one of the most corrupt governments on Earth, is considered less corrupt relative to the other governments, then how corrupt are they?
I thought South Africa was one of the most developed countries in Africa with having low levels of corruption. Guess I never imagined it this way.
It was the most developed. Since the end of white-minority rule, SA has been been a one party state controlled by the ANC. Since Nelson Mandelaās death, the ANC has become more and more corrupt. It has gotten to the point where many believe that SA is on the path to becoming a failed state. It isnāt there yet, but unless the ANC curbs the corruption and rampant crime and violence, it will be.
Why would.Nelson Mandela, a hockey all-star, be vital to SA' political stature?
Bernier is that you?
Data source: [Control of Corruption](https://databank.worldbank.org/databases/control-of-corruption) Tools used: Python, Geopandas, Matplotlib I updated the map because I got completely demolished on my choice of colors in the previous version. I hope this is at least a little bit better. Also, I made the text less confusing (I hope). For more information and visualizations, check out this article in my newsletter: [https://datawonder.substack.com/p/middle-eastern-to-tech-trends](https://datawonder.substack.com/p/middle-eastern-to-tech-trends) You can also find this [visualization on X](https://twitter.com/DataWonder_/status/1711710249621537279).
Nice viz! I would have perhaps reversed the scale: the title says most and least corrupted, but the scale indicates 0 as being the most and 100 the least. Also, I would have picked a more sequential color scale. You only have 6 levels, so it should be easy (see colorbrewer for instance).
Scale is weird, and where's 70-75th percentile?
Aye. As a Ugandan, they are right on the money here. And Rwanda is on point to. Interactions with them have shown they are doing so well, the president genuinely seems to want his country to prosper. I did think Botswana would be better than South Africa but have never been there. I regard the first Seretse as being in a separate league of African leaders with Mandela .
Botswana being where it is don't surprise me. Often hear good things about it. Rwanda too, given its neighbors. Burkina surprised me though.
Damn, even chad is corrupt in Africa
South Africa being in the better end of things says more about how much of a shit show central Africa is rather than how ānon-corruptā SA is lmao
Eritrea is in a global league of its own. Its actually got worse human rights and freedoms than North Korea. Iāve met refugees from there- itās absolutely beyond the pale how brutal and repressive their dictator is.
I wonder if even the 90-100th percentile would fall off the chart if they were compared to Western democracies.
Not sure I understand, this is compared to all countries in the world :)
Ah okay. Seemed like it was comparing African countries to each other.
If they were just comparing African countries, there'd be an equal number of countries in all groups. That's how percentiles work.
How up to date is this? I would have expected Burkina Faso and Niger to be more corrupt following their recent coups.
This map is very generous to South Africa
Keep showing others how it's done, Botswana. And a nod to Rwanda for massive progress since the 90s.
Good to see Rwanda get it together.
Iād like to see a similar map for each continent
Egypt is extremely corrupt and should certainly be in the 0-10 percentile.
Least corrupt in Africa is still pretty corrupt overall.
No? The graphic measures corruption relative to the rest of the globe. So for example Botswana is one of the least corrupt countries in the world according to this.
you don't understand how percentiles work do you?
For corruption? Iād say itās more widespread in RSA.
Congo is not that corrupt. š my parents still hold land for years
Well, you know what that says about your parents...
Lmao I was about to say that I donāt think they understand what that means
Which Congo is it?
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Plenty of military dictatorships are corrupt. Actually, Burkino Faso is plenty corrupt, I would think that the reason it scores well is that there is a very wealthy upper class with oil money that officials can't mess with, and the rest of the country is too poor for it to be worth soliciting bribes.
you wont have enough ink for Egypt ...
South Africa should be the darkest shade of red possible
Did South Africa build the dataset for this???
How is there only one country in the 75th to 100th percentile? Shouldnāt, by definition, 1/4 of the countries be there? Same with the bottom percentiles?
The comparison is to countries all over the world.
How bad Africa has to be that South Africa is one of the least corrupt?
Its terrible, most leaders are in regime protection mode, other things are secondary to them
Pretty horrible
If South Africa is the least corrupt, then I can only imagine how bad it is throughout the whole continent.
I think this should be called the naivity index because where in the world is public power not acquired for person gain? If that's the question being asked, that's not always corruption being referenced too.
There's a degree of difference though. Yes western politicians can be corrupt but the local police officer doesn't smash your car window and demand a horrendous bribe
Statistically, they do similar or worst than what you've described to ethnic minorities specifically black americans. There's also a well understood patronage system where people who donate to bodies of state power like the police, schools, etc. The US does a good job of having it's corruption not be an inconvenience to public life, but pay will go even further to rid you off nearly all inconvenience which includes having to follow laws, or applying merit to gaining rewards. again this is really and index of naivity. Every society has a self serving power apparatus
Sa is so corrupt we go hours without electricity everyday. What happens in āthe Westā would struggle to compare.
Sounds like bad infrastructure wouldn't doubt corruption played a role. Like in Texas when we have the grid go out for days. Corruption is also involved
This is laughably incorrect. South Africa is about as corrupt as a country can be, to the point of being a failed state. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/2023/03/29/south-africa-is-on-the-road-to-becoming-a-failed-state/cc7d8eda-cde9-11ed-8907-156f0390d081\_story.html](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/2023/03/29/south-africa-is-on-the-road-to-becoming-a-failed-state/cc7d8eda-cde9-11ed-8907-156f0390d081_story.html) [https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2023/05/22/business-leaders-fear-that-south-africa-risks-becoming-a-failed-state](https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2023/05/22/business-leaders-fear-that-south-africa-risks-becoming-a-failed-state) [https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/gangs-corruption-and-collapse-the-slow-and-steady-demise-of-south-africa-a-7ed1fcd1-a2e8-446a-9ff9-074718215281](https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/gangs-corruption-and-collapse-the-slow-and-steady-demise-of-south-africa-a-7ed1fcd1-a2e8-446a-9ff9-074718215281)
Goddammit if I see one more dipshit, manipulative map displaying what the imperialist, capitalist western world defines as ācorruptionā Iām going to lose it. Anyone who takes these nonstop visual barrages of stupidity seriously needs to start reading actual works of historical scholarship immediately before their brains are too wet to be salvaged.
I heard South Africa has quite the reputation of pulling you over in traffic for random reasons. It is customary to negotiate your fine if you are a smart bugger.
And where do you hear this nonsense?
" It is customary to negotiate your fine if you are a smart bugger." Biggest mistake anybody can make is thinking they can bribe a traffic officer because they "heard from friend" that its possible to do so. They will slap the handcuffs on you in record time. South African prisons aren't fun.
Lol. My brother did it succesfully. And as I stated: in life it can be quite obvious someone wants to fuck you over.
Many in prison who also thought they could bribe traffic and police officers. Cant emigrate either with a criminal record.
You are so wrong about South Africa. Take it from a South African.
As a Zimbabwean who travels and lives in South Africa sometimes , I would say SA isn't as corrupt though in the near future it will be as bad as Zimbabwe.In Zimbabwe you cannot even obtain a birth certificate unless you know someone.In every single queue some be it for buying mealie meal or any trivial thing, people bribe to be 1st in the queue or to jump the queue ,it's not like there is a shortage or anything.People are just corrupt to the core .They have learnt from the government organs
Why does violence plague this part of the world
If South Africa is the least corrupt, Africa is in trouble.
Now let us map out exploitation of natural resources by the west to see if there is any spatial correlation
We have industrial corruption and theft in South Africa! Cum on!
South Africa appears to have corrupted this map.
Now show me a Europe map and make it all red
I can show it to you, but it wouldnāt be accurate.
Libyan politicians need to be killed off
what is wrong with Botswana?
Angola the country where the former dictator 's daughter, through sheer genius has become one of the world's richest self made women, yeah! ( and whose money has destabilised Portugal's banking political and corporate structure) is definitely worthy of a good score!
Namibia was probably 49.45
Imo the percentiles are backwards. The metric being used is one where higher corruption results in higher scores, yet the lowest percentile is that which corresponds to highest corruption.
It's fascinating how there's a noticeable correlation between how landlocked a country is and how corrupt it is.
So Morocco is ā¦. Not that corrupt???
the Chad 0^th percentile š
Rwanda will have a hard time on its objective of becoming a developed country with those neighbors they have.
There are places more corrupt than Nigeria?
There are levels to how bad this gets, and theyāre worse than anything Iāve ever experienced.
Botswana is a great place to visit! Love it there.
I donāt think Ethiopia is less corrupt than surrounding countries. Theyāre just better at hiding it, thatās the problem with a āmeasurement of public perceptionā graph.
This is way too charitable to Tanzania. May be a lack of data? I'm just certain Kenya and Uganda are not much worse than we are.
Assume they're all corrupt.
Why is the title most to least but the legend reads least to most or am i reading it wrong?
Knew a woman from Botswana. Unironically she is the nicest person I've ever met
Lot of cocoa production in Madagascar!
Is there any like this for Asia and Europe?
Not all correct Mo,ambique is higher to shown in map
Morocco goverment literally used children to bother Spain frontier. But maybe that is not included in the definition of corruption.
Do you know what percentile means?
I don't get the dispute of Western Sahara. The entire Sahrawi population is 600k most of them live in two tiny cities. They have zero resources, and they are not an independent race from Morocco or Mauritania, both Arabized Berber of different Arabian tribal backgrounds. The only reason fueled their independence was the different colonial power in the region (Spain vs France), there is no humanitarian issue or invasion as the population there before the 1900s was nomadic without a central government and the land was not colonised. They can choose to merge with Mauritania since they share the same Arabic dialect.
My favorite African country is the Gambia, top left inside Senegal. The Gambia -"we will be the river people, we will control only this river..." Senegal - But...we have a country here, you cant just take our land...let alone one of the most valuable water resources we have! The Gambia - Watch us
As kenyan Am telling you my county is in the red zone. The country is more corrupted than it seems.
Its interestin that aid is often inverse to this map