Washington, DC – ONE: The Campaign to Make Poverty History highlighted the results of the latest release of data from the World Bank’s corruption index, the Worldwide Governance Indicators; African nations have shown the most marked decreases in corruption over the last ten years. According to the index, Kenya, Ghana, Niger, Sierra  Leone, Rwanda the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Tanzania have all shown “significant improvements in governance” since 1998.

Zimbabwe and Cote D’lvoire both suffered from increasingly poor governance, however.

“The latest data shows major improvements in good governance among a host of African nations. The improvements can be attributed to a variety of factors, including democratically elected leaders heeding the call of their citizens and good governance incentives from aid agencies like USAID and the Millennium Challenge Corporation,” Kimberly Cadena, ONE Campaign spokesperson, said. “Not all African nations are on the right track, and we must do all that we can to put pressure on those nations’ governments to be responsive to their citizenry. Stable, transparent governments are most able to effectively and efficiently distribute aid, and the latest World Bank reports reflects what ONE’s partners are seeing on the ground: when citizens and donor countries unite to demand accountability from African leaders and reward those who do right by their people, leaders respond and implement reform.”

Cadena concluded, “Never before have circumstances like these arisen to provide the opportunity to strike a fatal blow to extreme poverty and global disease. Only now has the informed and mobilized citizenry existed that can pressure American leaders to provide more and better aid to the growing number of well-governed poor countries. In addition to America’s increased efforts are those of other leading nations such as the U.K., Japan and Germany. Continued grassroots advocacy and the increased efforts of our government are necessary in order to take advantage of the aid recipient nations’ ability to effectively administer the funds and maximize our ability to help those that need it the most.”

The World Bank’s corruption index tracks countries’ governance in six areas:

• Voice and Accountability – The extent to which a country’s citizens are able to participate in selecting their government
• Political Stability – Perceptions of the likelihood that the government will be destabilized or overthrown by unconstitutional or violent means
• Government Effectiveness – The quality of public services, the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the governments’ commitment to such policies
• Regulatory Quality – The ability of the government to formulate and implement sound policies and regulations that permit and promote private sector development
• Rule of Law – The extent to which agents have confidence in and abide by the rules of society, and in particular the quality of contract enforcement, the police and the courts, as well as the likelihood of crime and violence
• Control of Corruption – The extent to which public power is exercised for private gain, including both petty and grand forms of corruption, as well as “capture” of the state by elites and private interests