Stopping impunity for corruption through enhanced accountability (SICEA)

Grand corruption continues to give elites loopholes to act with impunity, siphoning money away from the African continent and depriving the people in Africa of their rights and resources. Civil society actors in Africa continue to face challenges with respect to utilizing international accountability mechanisms and effectively advocating for anti-corruption reform to reduce impunity for corrupt actors.

The African continent continues to suffer critical outflows of its resources through illicit financial flows estimated at US $89 billion a year, reducing the ability of governments to provide basic services and protect the human rights of its people. In 2021, the Pandora Papers investigations exposed nearly 50 politicians and at least five current or former heads of state from the continent as abusing the global financial system and secretly moving their wealth offshore.

Effective accountability mechanisms and anti-corruption reforms to reduce impunity for actors are critical to limiting grand corruption.

Transparency International builds on its existing Chapters (independent locally based civil society actors) in Africa that are part of the TI Movement to deliver this project. Working with 11 chapters in Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Togo, Uganda, and Zambia, the project enables CSOs in Africa to engage with relevant legal accountability mechanisms and strengthen their advocacy efforts to advance anti-corruption reform in Africa more effectively.

The project has two main objectives:

1: Enable civil society in Africa to more effectively engage with relevant independent accountability mechanisms

2: Facilitate and strengthen national and regional advocacy efforts to promote anti-corruption reforms in Africa

• Legal capacity building: by delivering training and 1-1 technical and legal support to civil society organisation's for their preparation of legal case submissions on cross-border corruption to independent accountability mechanisms.

• Research and awareness raising: through regional research monitoring the progress of anti-corruption reform, the research findings will equip the relevant institutions with the necessary evidence to initiate targeted policy and institutional reforms to address the identified shortcomings.

• Regional advocacy: strengthening a community of practice of anti-corruption practitioners who hold duty bearers to account for and influence policy and legislative reforms by leveraging evidence from the research findings and recommendations from the regional reports provide the basis for multistakeholder policy dialogue among anti-corruption stakeholders in Africa.