Members of the East African Community (EAC) Sectoral Committee on Combating Corruption met in Tanzania last week, to review the progress made in the region’s quest to eradicate corruption.Among other things, participants urged partner states to provide more funding towards anti-graft programmes and mechanisms, and to do more to protect whistle blowers. While it was noted that partner states had taken positive steps to address corruption, various weaknesses were identified including the fact that, in some countries, anti-corruption watchdogs were themselves corrupt.The meeting came at a time when some EAC states ranked so poorly on the Transparency International’s global corruption index, with only Rwanda belonging to what is known as ‘Africa’s clean states’. However, with concerted efforts, experience sharing and close follow-up on the agreed measures, the EAC can go a long way in addressing one of the main threats to business and service delivery in the region.East Africans, particularly traders, have repeatedly cited corruption among the main Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs), which increase the cost of doing business with the final consumer bearing the ultimate burden.It is important that EAC member states learn from each other’s experiences so that successful measures in one country are replicated in the others to ensure better results.
