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2020 in Review: What the Numbers Say
SOUTH AFRICA'S RANK SUGGESTS A FAILURE OF GOVERNMENT EFFORTS TO MAKE REAL INROADS AGAINST THE ROOT CAUSES OF CORRUPTION.
As expected, the 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) had a strong Covid-19 focus, and as expected, South Africa showed neither improvement nor decline, scoring just 44.
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The CPI, respected as a leading global indicator of public sector corruption, scores and ranks 180 countries and territories around the world based on perceptions of corruption. It draws on 13 expert assessments and surveys of businesspeople, and uses a scale of zero to 100, where zero is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.
Released in January 2021, the CPI for the previous year highlighted the impact of corruption on the ability of countries around the world, including South Africa, to manage their health care responses to the Covid-19 pandemic.
It also highlighted South Africa’s pattern of stagnation over the past eight years. In the previous CPI the country also scored 44. In 2018 and 2017 it scored 43.
Before that, South Africa managed:
According to TI, a score below 50 indicates a significant corruption problem.
