Financial Transparency Coalition

It’s an interesting time for east Africa. Until recently, no one believed it had much energy wealth at all—6 billion barrels, tops, compared to its western counterpart, which boasts at least 60. But the times they are a-changin’. At the end of last month, Kenya sent the world and the markets a buzz when the government announced Canada’s Africa Oil Corp discovered oil in the northern region of Turkana. Given the geographical proximity and similarities, this discoverey also has implications for Ethiopia. And additional discoveries have already been made in neighboring Tanzania and Mozambique. The oil strike in Turkana does...

On a large scale, corruption undermines development and democracy, exacerbates poverty, erodes civil society, stifles social services, and worsens public health. When it involves cross-boarder flow of money, it is damaging to economies not just because of the underlying corrupt acts, but also because it deprives the country of both public and private resources—including financial capital—that might otherwise be diverted to productive activities. Most of the corruption that we talk about on this blog and in the general dialogue about corruption and economic development—concerns this sort of large-scale corruption. But there is another kind of corruption that is often overlooked:...

Eastern Europe has been wracked with corruption scandals over the past few weeks. In Hungary, Transparency International released a report about the cozy relationship between business and government in the country, and warns that the government’s internal checks and balances are breaking down. In Slovakia, Smer-Social Democracy party took over the government in part due to a massive corruption scandal. Earlier this year, two ex-ministers of Romania were jailed on corruption charges and Romaina’s former prime minister became the country’s first head of government to be convicted of corruption. The truth is, though, that corruption in Eastern Europe is not...

If you’re not one of the 112 million people to have already watched Jason Russell's Kony 2012 video on YouTube, you might be inclined to tune in here first. Kony 2012 is part-documentary, part-over-produced-Hollywood-flick that has engendered an enormous amount of attention and emotion on Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. It concerns Joseph Kony, a warlord from Uganda who, with the help of his forces, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), has abducted and enslaved tens of thousands of children in his own country, as well as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic. He remains...