Review of The Problem of Corruption in Kenya

Official corruption is a big detriment to business. Corruption can take many forms. Corruption can be described as a fraudulent or illegal behavior or action especially by people in power such as government or police officers. Alternatively, it could be defined as the inducement to wrong by unlawful or irregular means such as bribery. Some could say corruption is a departure from what is authentic or from what is pure and unerring.

The world is witness to the magnitude of corruption effects as seen in some of the most recent corruption scandals such as the federal reserve ponzi scheme where the federal reserve bought up a major part of the U.S government debt (many economists and analysists described this same as printing money out of thin air) or when Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari estimated some $150 billion had gone missing in Nigeria over the past ten years. However, in this paper, I am going to focus on the corruption status in Kenya. In the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2012 published by Transparency international (TI), Kenya was placed 139th out of 176 countries for corruption with a score of 27. It tied with Nigeria, Pakistan, Azerbaijan and Nepal. At the top of the list are the least corrupt countries.

Five years later in the CPI 2017 it was ranked 143rd with a score of 28. In the years 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 Kenya had a score of 27, 25, 25 and 26 respectively. The figure below is a representation of the CPI 2017 scores. From the information above, it can be derived that the status of corruption in Kenya over the last couple of years has been relatively consistent with the scores ranging between 25 and 27. However the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Kenya could manifest a different narrative with its 2017 GDB in USD billions reaching a new high of 74.94 which has been augmenting over the years as illustrated below. Therefore, one could argue that the corruption status doesn’t have a devastating impact on the financial state. But is this a fact? Are other economies all over the globe faring consummately than ours because of less adverse levels of political graft?