Interviewed By Chris Mbunwe
Despite Cameroon's slight 
improvement on Transparency International, TI, corruption perception index, from 2.1 last year to 2.2 on a score of 10 this year, Dr. Brian Cooksey, founder of the Tanzanian Development Research Group, TADREG, and a co-founder of TI Tanzania, thinks the country still has to do more.
Speaking to The Post in Yaoun de, Cooksey said Cameroon is still an extremely corrupt country. Cooksey, who taught English in Cameroon 35 years ago, however, said innocent citizen should not be penalised for their country's bad governance.
The Post: As a member of Transparency International, TI, in Tanzania and having lived and worked in Cameroon some 35 years ago, would you want to assess Cameroon's position on the corruption chart?
Dr. Brian Cooksey: I was in Buea in 1970, where I taught in Government Bilingual High School Molyko. A couple of years later, I went over to Yaounde where I spent two years doing research in the education sector. During my stay in Cameroon, there were two things that caught my attention. One, there was very little in the way of open speech or public press, or civil society or competitive politics.
Since it was a one party state, people did not talk much about politics in public because they were scared somebody was listening. Today, I have seen a big change in that perspective. You have now got competitive politics; you have got a relatively free press; there are private TV and radio stations and people are much more prepared to talk openly about these problems.
Secondly, however, in those days we knew so little about corruption because we didn't have any information. All we suspected was that there was a lot of misuse of public resources by top people. We didn't have any evidences. Now, in the last 10 years, it has been a real explosion globally, partly because of organisations like, Transparency International, partly also because for better or worse, the donor agencies, starting with the World Bank, have been talking more about corruption and good governance as related to development aid.
You must be in a position to know if and how the Cameroon government is fighting or not fighting corruption?
I took the trouble to look at what progress Cameroon has been making in the last 10 years in fighting corruption and improving governance and I found out that there has been a slight improvement in terms of fighting corruption. You know that Cameroon was considered the most corrupt country of the countries, which were listed in 1996 and is gone from the most corrupt African Country to being the third or fourth most corrupt African Country.
So, the ranking is only improved from 1.0 to 2.2. So Cameroon is still an extremely corrupt country by even African standards. Not only that but if you look at other indicators, such as the regulation of the economy by the state, the rule of law, political stability, you don't see any evidence that there is serious, significant, or sustained progress in terms of what Cameroon is achieving.
This leads me to pose the following questions: if the Cameroon government has been trying hard to improve governance and to reduce corruption over the last few years and that is not translated into perception by those who have been observing these issues, then what is wrong? Or is the people's perception wrong?
Or is it that the people are right and the perceptions are correct and the government is not achieving anything or achieving very little? That is my problem. It is very serious when you look at the general lack of progress in terms of Cameroon's attempt publicly and privately, to reduce corruption, compared to the indicators that show that those attempts are not leading anywhere very significantly.
I hope that some progress is going to be made sooner or later, which is real progress in fighting corruption but which the government cannot do on its own. This has to be an effort of all Cameroonians, government, civil society, private sector, religious organisations, trade unions etc.
How would you compare the level of corruption in Cameroon and what obtains in Tanzania, where you are coming from?
Tanzania has probably done a little bit better than Cameroon in the last five or 10 years. They are going down the same road of democratisation, market economy, and very dependant on foreign aid. But there have been some bright spots; pluralism has resulted in a vibrant opposition, but the governing party is still in control in Tanzania. Civil society organisations in Tanzania in my assessment, are stronger, more organised, and more appropriate to network than they are in Cameroon.
Must a country be seen to be fighting corruption successfully or improving on the quality of governance, before it benefits from debt relief?
I don't think a country such as Cameroon can be judged whether it is fighting corruption successfully before giving it or not giving it debt relief. No! This is because, some of the debts that Cameroon has piled over the years, are the fault of bad lending; it is not just the fault of the Cameroon government wasting otherwise good lunch.
There is an issue of absolute poverty. You can't expect countries to develop, if their debt burden was so much and why should you punish poor people for poor governance of their own country.
The general belief is that when you pump in a lot of aid, you are encouraging or sustaining corrupt governments in Africa?
There are people who say that, and I am afraid I am one of them. I have many years of looking at this issue in parts of Africa and it seems quite clear to me that over an extended period of time, large amounts of aid can have an extended consequence of supporting, strengthening the incumbent, elite, the powerful people to follow their own agendas.
My point here is the responsibility of rich people and rich countries to help people who are not as wealthy or who are not as fortunate as them. I believe, passionately, that we, rich countries, should be intimately involved in the development of the world, whether in terms of trade, debt relief or aid. I don't think that the current decision around debt relief and increase in aid takes into enough consideration the reasons why aid to these African countries has failed in the past.
What is the way forward for Cameroon?
First all of Cameroon has to be realistic about what she can achieve in a short term. We have to have a longer time horizon when we talk about having objectives for reducing corruption and improving the quality of government. Because government and donors are donors, we tend to think in one-year circle or three years circle we might think for government five years is a long time.
We don't expect miracles in poor countries, which for various reasons have got weak governments. We also have to be aware that some governments tend to exaggerate their capacities and successes. The fact remains that Cameroon's progress in fighting corruption is very, very insignificant, very marginal. There has to be a mass movement, with all involved, not only the government.
What memories do you have of Cameroon?
To me it is a fantastic experience to come back to Yaounde. I drove around places which I used to know and don't recognize them any more. Remember we are talking about 35 years; so most people in Yaounde were not born when I was here.
So the changes are incredible. Infrastructure-wise, a lot more universities, a lot more educated people. One of the educated people I taught is Barrister Akere Muna. I taught him in 1970 and he is now the Chair of Transparency International, Cameroon. So our relationship goes 35 years back. That is a lot of history that is more than half a lifetime.
Mr Brian Cooksey has spoken well but this reply does not go down well:
"I don't think a country such as Cameroon can be judged whether it is fighting corruption successfully before giving it or not giving it debt relief. No! This is because, some of the debts that Cameroon has piled over the years, are the fault of bad lending; it is not just the fault of the Cameroon government wasting otherwise good lunch.
There is an issue of absolute poverty. You can't expect countries to develop, if their debt burden was so much and why should you punish poor people for poor governance of their own country."
Neither does this except:
"... I don't think that the current decision around debt relief and increase in aid takes into enough consideration the reasons why aid to these African countries has failed in the past."
In a corrupt country in which embezzlement is rife most of the money borrowed by the country would be embezzled into personal accounts and hidden abroad. If these moneys were to be returned to the country the economy of the country would be boosted.
Other amounts would be lost or wasted because of bad or non-rigorous decisions. Too often aid is conceived only in financial terms (which is misleading, in my view) when a far better type of aid involves helping to transform the attitudes, values, and decision making capabilities of the leaders. One may call this spiritual aid (and is the type that I have been trying all along to provide, through this weblog) as opposed to material aid (which is presented in financial terms).
Still other amounts are lost because they are diverted into activities for which the aid was not intended. This means to every aid must be attached the requirements of transparency and accountability if we are to check these malpractices.
In short, the problems of Africa are caused by bad governance; therefore good governance should be fundamental to any decision to provide aid to a country.
The issue here is: how can we be sure that the money that accrues from the debt relief will be deployed to serve the needs of the people instead of being transferred into government officials' personal accounts abroad?
The only way that I would agree with Mr Brian Cooksey on this issue is if a means is found to completely bypass these corrupt governments so that they have no hand in the deployment of the debt relief income. It is quite possible to arrange for this in the following ways:
1) The government is forced to meet its debt obligations as usual.
2) The creditors collect this money into an aid fund for each country.
3) The creditors administer (or find a way to administer) the use of these funds from abroad. For instance, they can assess the economic potential of different parts of a country and then finance the construction of infrastructure to support the economy in these parts. The decisions should be based on the principle that the parts that have the greatest economic potential should be developed first.
4) The creditors work with relevant Western bodies to remove all these corrupt governments from power and to investigate their corrupt practices, with a view to punishing them and to returning all their stolen money to the African countries concerned.
5) The creditors work with relevant Western bodies to launch an anti-corruption campaign throughout these countries, and to invoke the democratic process to replace these corrupt governments with non-corrupt ones.
6) With the non-corrupt governments in place the creditors can now cancel the debts altogether, and delegate all their previous good governance activities to these governments (whom they continue to monitor in case complacency creeps in and old habits begin to reappear).
All these need a much greater positive and welcome influence by the West on African affairs. Considering that the West has often been associated in a negative way with Africa (colonisation, exploitation, financing corrupt governments, etc.) I really think that it owes us this one positive influence.
Posted by: Dr A A Agbormbai | Friday, 28 October 2005 at 07:53 AM
Mr Brian Cooksey has spoken well but this reply does not go down well:
"I don't think a country such as Cameroon can be judged whether it is fighting corruption successfully before giving it or not giving it debt relief. No! This is because, some of the debts that Cameroon has piled over the years, are the fault of bad lending; it is not just the fault of the Cameroon government wasting otherwise good lunch.
There is an issue of absolute poverty. You can't expect countries to develop, if their debt burden was so much and why should you punish poor people for poor governance of their own country."
Neither does this except:
"... I don't think that the current decision around debt relief and increase in aid takes into enough consideration the reasons why aid to these African countries has failed in the past."
In a corrupt country in which embezzlement is rife most of the money borrowed by the country would be embezzled into personal accounts and hidden abroad. If these moneys were to be returned to the country the economy of the country would be boosted.
Other amounts would be lost or wasted because of bad or non-rigorous decisions. Too often aid is conceived only in financial terms (which is misleading, in my view) when a far better type of aid involves helping to transform the attitudes, values, and decision making capabilities of the leaders. One may call this spiritual aid (and is the type that I have been trying all along to provide, through this weblog) as opposed to material aid (which is presented in financial terms).
Still other amounts are lost because they are diverted into activities for which the aid was not intended. This means to every aid must be attached the requirements of transparency and accountability if we are to check these malpractices.
In short, the problems of Africa are caused by bad governance; therefore good governance should be fundamental to any decision to provide aid to a country.
The issue here is: how can we be sure that the money that accrues from the debt relief will be deployed to serve the needs of the people instead of being transferred into government officials' personal accounts abroad?
The only way that I would agree with Mr Brian Cooksey on this issue is if a means is found to completely bypass these corrupt governments so that they have no hand in the deployment of the debt relief income. It is quite possible to arrange for this in the following ways:
1) The government is forced to meet its debt obligations as usual.
2) The creditors collect this money into an aid fund for each country.
3) The creditors administer (or find a way to administer) the use of these funds from abroad. For instance, they can assess the economic potential of different parts of a country and then finance the construction of infrastructure to support the economy in these parts. The decisions should be based on the principle that the parts that have the greatest economic potential should be developed first.
4) The creditors work with relevant Western bodies to remove all these corrupt governments from power and to investigate their corrupt practices, with a view to punishing them and to returning all their stolen money to the African countries concerned.
5) The creditors work with relevant Western bodies to launch an anti-corruption campaign throughout these countries, and to invoke the democratic process to replace these corrupt governments with non-corrupt ones.
6) With the non-corrupt governments in place the creditors can now cancel the debts altogether, and delegate all their previous good governance activities to these governments (whom they continue to monitor in case complacency creeps in and old habits begin to reappear).
All these need a much greater positive and welcome influence by the West on African affairs. Considering that the West has often been associated in a negative way with Africa (colonisation, exploitation, financing corrupt governments, etc.) I really think that it owes us this one positive influence.
Posted by: Dr A A Agbormbai | Friday, 28 October 2005 at 08:18 AM
This aid thing is a two edged sword, and a smart African would look at it carefully and follow the money. American aid is usually tied to doing business with American firms of the Halliburton variety, usually at unfavorable terms. Aid agencies are used to relieve unemployment in all of these donor countries. Do you know how much money the Cameroons pay for french cooperants when there are equally qualified citizens who could do their jobs better? Their pay is based on a loan, so the french government receives the money back with interest. French presidents pay for their elections with money recycled through aid, and in the process those in line in the laundering machinery get their cuts. The word "aid" is actually a euphemism for something else that is going on. There is a whole aid industry that eats up the majority of the aid money, so that little of it gets spent on the programs for which it was intended.
The only person to have confronted the aid industry head on is President Paul Kagame of Rwanda (mere mention of his name sends the Yaounde kleptocrats to the toilet with diarrhea). He seized their mighty jeeps and put them on the auction block, asking them to get smaller cars. He ordered them to stop hosting meetings at expensive hotels and instead to use free meeting space in government buildings and so on, a whole long list of things so that more of the so called aid should get to the people for whom it was intended instead of for sustaining the lifestyles of so called Aid administrators. That did not make him very popular with the Aid industry. The kleptocrats in Yde have no moral standing to do such a thing.
I still say, we can do it in the Southern Cameroons, but first we must have the moral courage to do what Endeley did in Eastern Nigeria.
Posted by: Ma Mary | Friday, 28 October 2005 at 10:07 AM
MKOP (my kind of people) go the President Mbeki route - ask Western Europe and North America to unconditionally drop tariffs on all African goods. We will repay the debt in full.
Let the farming sisters in Buea be able to place their yams in Brixton market and sell them at 2,500 FCFA per kilo. I bet they still make money after transportation costs.
Let the banana industry be able to place commercial TV adverts to teach Europeans to eat a cleaner fruit, free of toxic chemical residues like those in strawberries and on apples.
Let Marks & Spencer PLC be able to set up a clothing factory in Victoria to make those 18,000 FCFA shirts for British shops.
Open up the airspace for competition.
Forgiving loans is a gimmick.
On leadership, it is up to Africans to deal with their leaders - take a lesson from the recent Romanian revolution. European leaders are also corrupt but they have learnt not to mess up their people. European punishment is certain, swift and can be severe. The African's open-ended pledge to loyalty and peace is a bad mistake which undermines deliberate accountability. An old English saying has good reason - "those who want peace must be prepared for war".
Martin.
Posted by: Martin | Friday, 28 October 2005 at 08:10 PM