Blockchain in Africa - Fraud and Corruption
I am fairly sure that we have corruption in governments all over the world. I do believe in Africa the problem of corruption and fraud has become so bad, that people just accept it as the norm.
The transparency of the blockchain will make a difference. I do not believe it will solve the problem as a whole, but we will at least have proof of fraud and corruption. It is then up to the appropriate figures and entities to take the necessary action against the culprits.
Recent cases of corruption and fraud in South Africa.
There are similar cases across Africa and I am sure across the rest of the world as well. I will use some examples, where in South Africa to proof my point. The nine points below comes from a News Paper bulletin a while back. You can view the original list here
Nkandla South Africa
The South African president Zuma, spent millions of tax payers money to build himself a beautiful little place in his home town, Nkandla. He justified a lot of the money spent as Security Upgrades. For example, the pool he build was justified through that the water will be used just in case of there is a fire on the premises. I really found this video extremely funny where Jeremy Clarkson had a go at President Zuma
Local Governments in South Africa
A few years ago the local governments in South Africa were announced the most corrupt institutions. It is ridiculous to think about how corrupt the guys are that spent your tax money. I work in a large ICT organisation, and encounter many government officials. I am not somebody that stands for corruption and have never paid anybody a bribe to secure work for our organisation. You can see more detail here
Tender Fraud
When you coin a name for tender fraud and corruption it must be in my opinion already out of hand. The phrase tenderpreneurship is now used for case where corrupt individuals award tenders to their friends and family.
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The South African Police Services
It is an everyday thing for corrupt police officers forces solicits bribes for not giving traffic fines or much more serious cases. Many court cases are thrown out due to the fact the police case file disappeared.
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Our parliament
This must be the worst of all. A few years ago, 14 members of parliament was founded guilty and only had to pay fines after they misused the travel voucher system. In 2011 US$1 Million was written off and no criminal charges was laid against the MP's involved :)
Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula grossly overspent (totalling R65 million) on one awards ceremony in 2013. Yet again a dodgy and inflated tender was involved. According to Business Day Live he spent a colossal R110 million on various prize giving ceremonies while sports development at school level is in the doldrums.
I have hundreds of examples like the above. Our president are still in power, his friends is still in government in leading positions.
I do not believe that it will be easy to get mainstream adoption of any blockchain solution from a government perspective, before we have more transparent and less corrupt government in place. BUT nothing stops us from implementing the solution from bottom up, and get crypto into the hands of the masses and work our way up the ladder.
Happy Steeming
If you enjoy my articles please follow me on my blog at @jacor
I am writing a series of articles about problems in Africa, which will be followed with how we can use Blockchain solutions to resolve the problems.
Blockchain WILL solve problems in Africa and other developing countries
Developing countries should embrace blockchain and cryptocurrency
Blockchain in Africa - The Unbanked
It's funny isn't it; when people talk of corruption they always mention Africa, politicians buying themselves palaces.
However look at the biggest corruption scandal ever; George Bush/Haliburton took place in front of the world's eyes. Africa learned it's corruption from Western colonialism, they are corruption infants.
Britain, France, America, write an article about that corruption, there's plenty of material :-)
Cg
Thanks @cryptogee and I fully agree with you ! The reason that I wrote about Africa however, and more specifically South Africa, is that I am from SA, and not a happy with all the corruption here. I will leave it to the representatives off those countries to write about their countries. I am sure that there are just as much corruption in other countries :)
Ah yes, as I was writing that i was thinking; "maybe he come's from there"
Power corrupts, yet we keep giving individuals power :-(
Cg
Yes, another point to agree on. But we sit here with a historic problem where the masses are afraid to lose the power again to the old regime. Now they just vote to keep the current ruling party in power. The corruption fraud and tenderpreneurship is taking over :) But I still like the old Guiness saying: All comes to those who wait ... You never know, maybe the masses will still vote for the real good and not about of what they are scared off :)
This is it, I try and tell people that here in the UK, that once you start voting for people, just so "the others" don't get in; we put ourselves in a situation whereby they feel they can put forward anyone (Hillary Clinton) and still win.
Then one day; they are left saying; "how did that happen!"
Cg
I live in Norway. The ordinary man in the street thinks ... "corruption, that's something to be found in countries like Russia". It's a dangerous sentiment, most people wouldn't believe that corruption takes place also in Norway, but I do believe it's a serious problem.
The most obvious forms of of corruption - some government representative (be it a low-level police man or a top-level politician in the government) openly asking for a bribe, or some person openly trying to pay money for a favorable treatment ... that's pretty unheard of, almost impossible here - but corruption comes in many forms; I believe it's often a kind of "I scratch your back and you scratch mine"-sentimentality. Sometimes you'll see some former politician or bureaucrat getting a well-paid job at some company that formerly got favorable treatment by said person. Corruption or not? It can be pretty difficult to prove that corruption has found place.
I would love to live in a country where the police cannot openly ask for a bribe and I agree that it will be very difficult to get away from corruption as a whole. There will always be the "bad" part of humankind that will find ways to be corrupt.
South Africa is however very far from being a corruption free country. The government is the most corrupt of all. I have never been a racist. Not even in the old government where apartheid was the rulers. For me it was always that the best person for the job, must get the job. I do not believe that I will even see a change away from the corrupt government in my lifetime.
How can the blockchain help?
I think it would be very good if all government income and expenditures were done on an open blockchain, and with the accounting openly available so everyone could see how the money is spent. Receipts and contracts should also be openly available (generally - exceptions do apply - but far too often secrecy is the norm and openness the exception).
This would help quite much against embezzlement, and it would help bring light to dodgy tenders, but it would be no silver bullet neither against the more advanced forms of corruption nor against the very low-level form of corruption; a monetary reward directly from person A to person B, and person B doing something favorable for A in return (i.e. traffic cop B stopping car A for some traffic offence and then just waving the car further).
Of course, unless you want all transactions attributed directly to identified people and openly visible. For privacy reasons that's probably not wanted. (but it's still probably a lot better than transactions that are hidden for most folks, but plainly visible for banking employees, government officials, computer security crackers, etc
Hi @tobixen, I agree with all your statements above. I do not believe the blockchain and crypto will expose ALL the corruption. Maybe in the very long term, when the world as a whole adopts the blockchain. This will however take many years. I also believe that governments and financial institutions will try to regulate the blockchain and crypto environments to benefit themselves in the long run. It is however the best chance we have to revolutionise the world from a financial perspective.
@jacor Interesting post. I actually posted about something similar and totally believe it is the answer to all the problems. Is Cryptocurrency and Open-data the answer to Africa’s thriving corruption and poverty?
Thanks @mokluc , I found your posts just as interesting!
Corruption is an endemic disease of political centralized systems
Africa is just a micro cosmos of corruption of the macro corruption that the neocolonialists impose.
Any zone in Africa, were the neocolonialists find some rich natural resources, then local corruption and power abuse and even killings are made, always protected by the "invanding" foreign potentiates that are the main "corruptors" of local authorities
But notice that the budgets are very small and they steal 90% of nothing, while every corruptocrat in Europe steal only 0,5 % of budgets of millions, and nothing happens to them.
My youth was in Africa , Mozambique, but I go every year to Angola and other Portuguese speaking countries, and it's the same all over Africa. Power rules
But rich countries the "invaders of the lost ark of natural resources" could stop corruption instead of facilitating it, because of their own "self-corrupt needs"
Never forget, corruption will end only if the conspiracy of "source-code" overthrow the "centralized systems society " and prove in practice the value of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs)
Thanks a lot for commenting again @charlie777pt.
I believe that DAO's and DAC's is the way to do things in the future and we will hopefully path the way for civilization to evolve to a state of Free Society.
Love the word Corruptocrats by the way!
Let us be realistic and think a little. Organizations (governments and companies), individuals seek security and protection of their information. Who opens the door of his house for access to everyone? The blockchain is public and transparent. It is the paradise of voyeurism: see what everyone does without being seen.
First, few organizations can accept such a system without compromising themselves. In addition, only a small number of techno individuals can access the blockchain and then interpret the information.
And corruption will continue outside the blockchain ... on a golf course, in a pool room, in a gym or in a bar.
Perhaps our taxes should go into a block-chain system that decides where it will go based on actual NEED.
Cities should be run by AI.
That remains me a recent conversation ... ;)
And to add: a blockchain could help to get information, but not all the (offline) information,