The Link Between Corruption and Poverty : Lessons from Kenya Case Studies

INTRODUCTION "One thing can be said-the mere fact that corruption has become an item of national preoccupation is paradoxically the first real achievement by Kenyans over corruption" Since the end of the last decade the emphasis has moved from building public awareness on corruption issues to understanding the nature of corruption and its effects on the economy, society and politics; understanding the nature of the beast as it were. The global anti-corruption movement, therefore, has moved towards research and a host of rigorous tools have been developed to study and monitor corruption wherever it takes place. Hand in hand with this, efforts to combat corruption …show more content…

It usually involves the kind of scams whose figures are so huge that when they are successfully concluded they have macroeconomic implications fairly quickly-they cause banks to collapse, inflation to rise, the ex change rate to decline. The impetus for looting is often political and it happens under the direction or with the acquiescence of important political players in a given country. It often involves, for example, the printing of currency to fund fictitious projects, using public revenues to award enormous contracts to individuals who never supply the goods or the services. The primary movers in the companies behind these scams don't just cream off 10 or 20 percent with a cut within that for the higher-ups. In these deals the cut can be as high as 100 percent and most of the cash goes to the higher-ups. These resources fund election campaigns and pay for private militias in many African countries. Another important distinction between grand corruption and looting is that in cases of grand corruption a minister may take a kickback of 100,000 dollars on a government road construction contract worth a million dollars. The road is built but its quality does not reflect its cost. Looting on the other hand is a much more premeditated activity because it often entails the deliberate creation of a government project for which resources will be allocated and spent but the