Fact check: Claims that Ghana's corruption ranking has improved since 2017 false
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo made certain claims that Ghana’s anti-corruption ranking had seen some improvement since he assumed office in 2017.
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In a recent interview President Akufo-Addo had with CNN’s Zain Asher, it has him on record saying since his party took over in 2017, Ghana’s ranking in the world, in terms of corruption, has improved significantly.
As reported by Citinews, the president in his own words said Ghana has “gone up several notches.”
Source: Original
When asked if he was proud of the way his government has dealt with corruption and what specific steps are being taken to root it out, Akufo-Addo gave such an optimistic answer.
"...a lot has been done, and it is reflected in Ghana’s growing position on rankings of corruption in the world. We’ve gone up several notches since I came into office ..," he said.
Akufo-Addo saying that Ghana has gone up several notches since he assumed office meant that Ghana’s ranking has significantly improved since the 2016 report.
According to data from Transparency International, during Mahama's tenure in 2016, Ghana was ranked 70th out of 180 countries with a score of 43. In 2017, the country ranked 81st with a score of 40. In 2018, Ghana was ranked 78th most corrupt country with a score of 41, in the year 2019 the country was ranked 80th with a score of 41.
This data indicates Ghana's score when it comes to corruption has dropped since 2016, and the Akufo-Addo government took over in 2017. This contradicts President Akufo-Addo's assertion that the country has improved in terms of ranking.
According to the world’s most trusted metric for assessing perceived levels of public sector corruption, the Corruption Perception Index, its reports published between 2012 and 2020 showed Ghana had not risen significantly in terms of perceptions of lower corruption.
The Global Corruption Barometer, in its latest document (2019) finds that 33% of people it interviewed were of the view that corruption had increased in the previous 12 months.
The same percentage of people also indicated that they had paid bribes in the last 12 months to access public service.
Based on the available data from Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, it is untrue that Ghana’s ranking has improved or ‘gone up several notches’ since President Akufo-Addo assumed office in 2017.
In other news, the information minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has indicated that the views by a section of the Ghanaian public that the culture of silence is virtually creeping back into the country cannot be correct.
He questioned how a country with over 500 vibrant media houses operating can be said to be in a culture of silence.
Oppong Nkrumah noted that the kind of narrative the media carry about the country are the ones that will be used by the international community to grade the country.
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Source: YEN.com.gh
