The challenge of working with Anti-corruption in Africa

People ask me, - so what are you doing here? and I answer -well, I'm working with anti-corruption in Eastern and Southern Africa! The person's eyes then goes kind of blank and from his/her expression I gather their thoughts must go in the direction of -is this a mad woman? or -what an impossible task! But instead they merely ask - so how long are you planning to stay for? Would seem I need a lifetime to really achieve anything in this field, and yet I only have a year or two..

Cartoon on how many workshops don't necessarily lead to action...

Cartoon showing the magnitude of the problem.. and how eventually one gets too familiar with it..

 I have a very fancy title - Programme Analyst of Democratic Governance and Anti-corruption. Haven't really figured out what exatctly it entails yet.. but I'm in the Governance Team and together we are 9, although only me and one other working only on anti-corruption - my supervisor Job Ogonda from Kenya. I'm the only whitie in the team, the others are from Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Lesotho and Uganda.

The office is the Regional Service Centre for Eastern and Southern Africa, meaning that we support  and provide policy advice and technical backstopping on various areas (ie democractic governance, poverty reduction, HIV/AIDS, etc) to the country offices in our region - totalling 22 country offices; Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Southern Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Mauritius&Seychelles, Comoros Islands and South Africa.  There is one other regional centre in Africa based in Dakar, Senegal for support to West and Central Africa.

The entrance of the UN building in Joburg - for security reasons without any UN flags or signs

I have just been thrown into things and my second week in the office I attended a training for government officials from all over Africa on how to review the UN Convention against Corruption adopted by most African governments. Interesting how they need trainers from Europe to come down to teach 'us' (I'm already putting myself with the Africans, hehe) the technicalities while most of the discussions were actually different african interpretations of the provisions in the convention, leaving the facilitators utterly speechless and confused!

The government officials in big suits and the pale tall me in the back

Last week was a regional Community of Practice meeting on Governance and Anti-corruption in Nairobi, Kenya. It was the first of its kind organised by the regional office, so it required a lot of improvisation, especially from my side! There were at least 80 participants and I could never know when I would be called upon to summarize discussions and present for everyone. It was a good way of meeting all my colleagues scattered across the continent and listen to their challenges and realities in their respective countries. Especially touching was the situation in Southern Sudan where they are preparing for the referndumk to be held in January on whether to seceed or not. Everyone is already assuming they will vote in favour, but there is a lot of politicking with the north as much of the oil is in a border area where the borders are still highly disputed.. it is expected that President Bashir will not recognize the current borders and there are still no conflict resolution mechanism to ensure stability after the referendum.. There are many challenges of voter education as well as there are hardly any paved roads in Southern Sudan, logistics is a major problem. What will happen to Southern Sudan after independence is another question all together - imagine a working bureaucracy without computers, without pens, without skills (or mostly military skills that is..)?

There will be more to come...