Corruption in the African Government

As we have been discussing in class, Africa is facing a large amount of government corruption. This corruption has been leading to increased poverty all over in Africa. In many of the articles I read online about the corruption of Africa, many of them spoke specifically of Nigeria and the corruption caused mainly by the greed of those wanting a part of the oil money.


What specifically caught my eye is the corruption in education. One website in particular focused a bit on this topic, www.globalpolicy.org. It said that the problem with those in poverty is mostly that they have no mobility in the social classes. This is because education is one thing that can bring them out of their poverty, but that many teachers take bribery for grades, therefore, many who are in poverty cannot pay the bribery in order to receive passing grades. Therefore, they are stuck in the same place they were. When reading this I thought of two things. One is, for someone who is becoming an educator I do not understand how you could become an educator for something other than wanting to help and impact your students in the most positive way possible. But the other led me to remember that Dr. Ogbomo had talked about when a new goverment takes office those in charge find their friends to become things, such as, the Minister of Education. So they are not necessarily in it to help the students, but rather to help themselves. Instead of the benefits of the wealthy trickling down to help all in Africa the only thing that seems to be trickling down is corruption, everyone is looking out for themselves and a piece of the pie.


The picture to the left represents the peoples confidence in their government fighting corruption in the country. Although this a little older, many articles I read online did say that Kenya has been making great strides in the past years to eliminate corruption. But notice how the people of Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Mozambique feel.