OP-ED | On Role of African Diaspora in Combatting Corruption in Africa By Amin Buba Dibal
Amin Buba Dibal argues the African Diaspora has a crucial role to play in combating corruption on the continent given their comparative influence over their kinsmen back home through remittances and by leveraging cutting-edge technologies, global networks as well as international anti-graft conventions.

It is no news that corruption has been the bane of development in Africa. Leone Ndikumana, in his book “The Trial of Capital Flight from Africa: The Takers and the Enablers,” argued that from 1970 to 2018, African countries lost over $2 trillion to corrupt capital flight, which is almost the annual gross domestic product of all sub-Saharan countries.
On a yearly basis, Africa lose nearly US$60 billion. Citing specific examples, the book pointed to the loss of $100 billion in capital flight from 1986 to 2018 by Angola while South Africa lost USD$329 billion from 1970 to 2018. On another note, Nigeria has lost US$530 billion to corruption since independence in 1960.
The impact of public corruption and capital flight from Africa has manifested in failed service delivery of basic social services for Africans. Subsequently, citizens in countries like Nigeria provide water for themselves by drilling motorized boreholes in their households just as they form and fund vigilante groups to provide security for their neighborhoods. Many citizens also rely on private healthcare facilities for medical care since the public ones are barely functioning.
The gradual slide to failed-state status of many African countries is principally because citizens and other social actors are unable to ensure accountability while leaders lack conscience and are not driven by the spirit of patriotism, a departure from what we have seen in countries like UAE where despite absolute power at the disposal of the leaders, the governments are disposed to a benevolent orientation to governance and the development of their nations.
Except in extremely few cases like the UAE improvement in the quality of governance in contemporary human history has all been achieved based on robust social engagement between leaders and citizens in a manner that accountability is demanded and secured. Docile citizenship in African democracies with sit-tight leaders like Equatorial Guinea, Cameroun and Uganda has allowed corruption to fester and led to the destruction of democratic tenets.
Historically, there is no evidence of the reversal of any evil in human society by just wishful thinking and lamentation. In this vein, I believe the African Diaspora has a role to play in combating corruption. The diaspora could help mitigate corruption as a panacea against Africa’s underdevelopment given their comparative influence over their kinsmen back home through remittances and their access to information and cutting-edge technologies, networks, and various other skills necessary in the campaign against corruption.
Admittedly, governments across the continent have established anti-graft agencies to confront the menace such as Kenya’s Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), Rwanda’s National Public Prosecution Authority (NPPA) and Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to mention few. Likewise, 15 African countries are members of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), committed to open governance and empowering civil society to demand accountability.
Corruption and its impact is succinctly postulated by the United Nations Convention on Anti-Corruption (UNCAC) which reads thus: “Corruption is an insidious plague that has a wide range of corrosive effects on societies. It undermines democracy and the rule of law, leads to violations of human rights, distorts markets, erodes the quality of life and allows organized crime, terrorism and other threats to human security to flourish.
“This evil phenomenon is found in all countries—big and small, rich and poor—but it is in the developing world that its effects are most destructive. Corruption hurts the poor disproportionately by diverting funds intended for development, undermining a Government’s ability to provide basic services, feeding inequality and injustice and discouraging foreign aid and investment. Corruption is a key element in economic underperformance and a major obstacle to poverty alleviation and development”.
Financial corruption poses a threat to the global democratic governance system as seen in increasing cross-national corruption connections, as COVID-19 was to the global health system. Thus, there is a need for renewed investment to undermine the prevalence of corruption in the global system with the support of global good governance mechanisms.
Through its remittances, the African Diaspora contributes to national development across the continent in many ways, with total remittances from the Diaspora amounting to over $100 billion in 2023. Nigerians in Diaspora alone remit close to about $20 billion annually. These remittances have helped fund school fees, innovative entrepreneurial projects, the construction of health facilities, and health outreaches as well as supporting the welfare of millions of families in Africa.
It is the monster of corruption that is making the diaspora toil to send money back home to support the needs of their families, which ordinarily should have been provided by the government as part of their social contracts with the people. These begs the need for the diaspora to join the strategic fight against corruption which will have a multiplier effect on the welfare of citizens, and the growth of our economies and save them from the pressure to send money home to address challenges that are man-made and result from lack of an accountable governance.
Historically, the Diaspora and Western-educated elite have played key roles in African independence movements and the growth of democracy on the continent. Leaders like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and Moktar Ould-Daddah of Mauritania, were all educated in the Diaspora or specifically the West after which they returned home to lead their countries independence struggles.
Against this background, though the context of some of our nations’ founding fathers’ stay in the Diaspora was different there are valid international instruments our Africans in the Diaspora can leverage to combat the menace of corruption back home which has held back the development of our continent. I specifically wish to recommend the following engagement strategies to the organized African Diaspora for consideration:
Lobby: The African Diaspora can form a lobby group for the fight against corruption to enhance good governance on the continent. The records of other lobby groups prove them to be a veritable mechanism for influencing government policies. In the USA, for example, the Jewish Lobby, Cuban-American lobby, African-American and Armenian-American lobby and other pressure groups like the Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) are good examples of how lobbies can be used to combat corruption in Africa. For instance, the Jewish Lobby in the US succeeded in securing 0.1 percent of the US budget as far back as the 70s to serve the security interest of Israel. The African Diaspora lobby should focus on mitigating corruption and capital flight.
The ICC: The organized African Diaspora can engage the international judicial system especially the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the need to expand the scope of some of its jurisdictions. The focus here can for example be around the need for review of Part 2 of the Rome Statute on “Jurisdiction Admissibility and Applicability of the Law” and specifically Article 7 on the types of issues that constitute “crime against humanity” to include grand embezzlement of public funds with the potentials of depriving millions of people of social services. This recommendation envisages the potential of creating permissibility for organized groups like the African Diaspora to file charges at the court on corruption against the masses of a country’s population when public funds are siphoned exceeding some threshold and or laundered abroad.
UNCAC: The African Diaspora can explore engaging the provisions of international anti-graft instruments mandates such as the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) to advocate for “Criminalization” and “Asset Recovery” concerning corruption in developing countries. This could, for example, include demand for revising provisions of clauses on “facilitation of peer-to-peer information exchange and informal cooperation” and “cooperation and assistance…to identify, trace, freeze, preserve, seize, confiscate, manage and return stolen assets.” If given access to such data and information African Diaspora groups can demand accountability at many levels and deter the prevalence of corruption in Africa.
Civic Education: Despite the widespread availability of media bodies and social media platforms, Africans remain largely uninformed about concepts like social contract, accountability, citizens’ sovereignty, and social justice. This is why citizens across Africa are almost worshipping public officeholders for the most basic public services. Thus, the diaspora can consider funding intensive civic education campaigns in the media and reviewing education curricula in Africa to introduce governance accountability, social justice, and the implications of corruption to livelihood and development. The campaign should be widely implemented and sustained over long periods. Empowering citizens with information about their rights, responsibilities and privileges would go a long way in enhancing democracy and good governance.
Another second aspect of this strategy could be funding investigative journalism stories to identify and expose grand corrupt practices and their implications for development. Some compelling examples of these investigative stories are the BBC Africa Eye, an investigative reporting series whose edition titled “Congo’s Missing Millions” was aired in 2022. Another example is a recent documentary on Al Jazeera English on the corrupt practices of the former Prime Minister of Bangladesh titled “The Ministers’ Millions” which aired in October 2024.
On the cultural front, naming and shaming is a normative practice in the African tradition for deterring socially ill practices. The naming and shaming should be popularized through the media for wider reach. Exposing corrupt practices by public officials will yield the needed results in terms of accountability and good governance in Africa. In conclusion, it is important to recognize that the prevalence of financial corruption by public officials can pose a serious threat to the growth of democracy, and encourage military coup d’états.
It is unethical and a misnomer in the 21st century to allow certain people to steal millions and billions of dollars while occupying a position of trust and nothing legally happens to them nationally or internationally. Why should the “civilized” global social system with its clamor of reason, technological advancement, social justice and human rights allow the perpetration of grand financial corruption by individuals in privileged public positions of authority to succeed?
Amin Buba Dibal is a Nigerian public affairs commentator. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect African Newspage’s editorial policy.