Malawi’s better ranking on corruption could deceive it

Corruption is indisputably one of the biggest vices rocking the 18 million Malawians today. It’s not Covid-19. And it’s not Tropical Storm Cyclone Ana; but corruption, domiciled at Capital Hill. Over the years, this beast has robbed Malawi of its trillions of kwacha.

But the comforting news is that in 2020, Transparency International (TI), which scores countries globally according to its Corruption Perception Index (CPI), ranked Malawi 111st on its index out of 180 countries. This is a drop from 123 out of 180 in 2019.

Generally, TI said compared to other countries, Malawi’s score is slightly below average. For the score of 111 Malawi was assigned a rate of 30 out of 100, again a slight drop from 31/100 in 2019.

CPI ranks countries around the world, based on how corrupt their public sectors are perceived to be. The results are given on a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean. 

Compared to the previous year, in 2021 Malawi’s level of corruption decreased a bit. In the long term, it has also declined moderately in recent years, according to TI.

TI also reports that more than two-thirds of countries in the world score below 50. And despite some progress, nearly half of all countries have been stagnant on the CPI for almost a decade. “These countries have failed to move the needle in any significant way to improve their score and combat public sector corruption.”

To give you a better picture of where Malawi stands regionally on CPI; Zambia increased to 117 in 2020 from 113 in 2019. Thus on CPI the country decreased to 33 points in 2020 from 34 Points in 2019.

Mozambique increased to 149 in 2020 from 146 in 2019. This means Malawi was ranked better than both Zambia and Mozambique on CI.

But Tanzania which was ranked 94 in 2020 from 96 in 2019 fared better than Malawi. 

The region’s economic giant, South Africa, had an even better rank of 71 out of 180 countries in 2019. The country recorded a marginal improvement in 2020 when it had a score of 44/100, ranking it 69 out of 180 countries.

That Malawi improved in its ranking on CPI in 2020 is indeed comforting news. We can only implore the Tonse Alliance administration to aim at sustaining and growing this positive trend.

What all this means  that being the weakest economy in the region, corruption in Malawi is a heavier wedge hammer on the ordinary people than is the case in its neighbours.

Both Zambia and Mozambique have a better gross domestic product (GDP) per capita income, according to Trading Economics global macro models analysts. Zambia has a GDP per capita income of $1260. In the long-term, this is projected to trend around $1280 in 2022 and $1300 in 2023.

Mozambique has a GDP per capita of $580.  In 2022, the country’s GDP per capita is projected to trend around $595.

On the other hand, Malawi has the lowest GDP per capita of $532 and in 2022, its GDP per capita is projected to trend around $550. What all this means is that both Zambia and Mozambique economies have better resilience than Maalwi, which means less hardship on those on the high end of poverty despite being billed worse on CPI. What it also means is that Malawi’s better ranking by CPI should not make the country start basking in its laurels. 

As President Lazarus Chakwera rightly said last week, everybody should play their part if the country is to win the war against corruption. But as President he is expected to lead the fight by walking the talk.