By Savithri Rodrigo
Victoria, Seychelles (Commonwealth Union)_Seychelles, an archipelago of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean has been ranked the least corrupt country in the African continent in Transparency International’s 28th Corruption Perception Index (CPI). It ranks 23rd globally with seventy points and maintains the top ranking in the sub-Saharan African region for the fifth consecutive year.
Seychelles outperformed major western democracies including the United States, in the CPI which uses a scale of 0 to 100 to score across 180 countries. Zero would be highly corrupt and 100 clean. Seychelles gained 70 points. The United States is just behind Seychelles with a score of 69 points.
Denmark overtook Finland this year to gain top rank as the world’s least corrupt country with 90 points pushing Finland to second place. New Zealand came in third. Norway and Singapore make up the top five.
Seychelles has been committed to a path of anti-corruption, working tirelessly to root out corruption, a mission that has obviously been very successful given the result of keeping Seychelles at the top of the African rankings in the CPI for five consecutive years. The archipelago, a former British colony which depends heavily on upmarket tourism and the fishing industry has made some great strides in its Key Performance Indicators including having a high per capita income, good healthcare and education.
In the larger scheme of global corruption, the CPI found that most of the world continued to fail in fighting corruption with 95% of the countries making little or no progress since 2017. The countries that scored the worst were Somalia, Syria, South Sudan, Venezuela and Yemen.
