2021 Corruption Perception Index: Ghana ranked 73

Ghana has been ranked 73 out of 180 countries/ territories and scored 43 out of a possible clean score of 100.

This is according to the 2021 Corruption perception Index (CPI) released by Transparency International (TI).

This CPI score indicates that Ghana failed to make progress in the fight against corruption in the year 2021 as the score of 43 is the same as the country’s 2020 score. Ghana’s current performance is still below 50 which is the expected average and thus leaves much to be desired.

Global Highlights

The CPI global average remains unchanged at 43 for the tenth year in a row, and two-thirds of countries score below 50.

i. The top countries on the Index are Denmark (88), Finland (88), and New Zealand (88),

all of which also rank in the top 10 percent in the world on the Democracy Index Civil

Liberties score.

ii. Somalia (13), Syria (13), and South Sudan (11) remain at the bottom of the CPI.

Syria is also ranked last in civil liberties (Somalia and South Sudan are unrated).

27 countries – among them Cyprus (53), Lebanon (24), and Honduras (23) – are all at

historic lows this year.

In the last decade, 154 countries have either declined or made no significant progress.

i. Since 2012, 23 countries have significantly declined on the CPI – including advanced

economies such as Australia (73), Canada (74), and the United States (67), the latter

dropping out of the top 25 countries on the Index for the first time.

ii. 25 countries have significantly improved their scores, including Estonia (74), Seychelles(70), and Armenia (49).

Corruption, Democracy, and Human Rights

The 2021 CPI focuses on Corruption, Democracy, and Human Rights. According to TI,

corruption enables both human rights cases of abuse and democratic decline and in turn these

factors lead to higher levels of corruption, setting off a vicious cycle.

TI further posits that the global COVID-19 pandemic has opened doors for governments to further expand their executive powers, conceal information from the public, and strip away rights.

This year’s CPI shows that 154 countries have either declined or made no significant

progress in tackling corruption in the last decade and 27 countries are at historic lows in

their score.

What Needs to be Done

According to TI, corruption may be a multi-faceted problem, but it is one we know how to solve. To end the vicious cycle of corruption, human rights violations, and democratic decline, TI recommends that governments around the world should uphold the rights needed to hold power to account; restore and strengthen institutional checks on power; combat transnational forms of corruption and uphold the right to information in government spending.

Specifically, for Ghana, GII recommends the following:

Enhance institutional checks on power, Empower citizens to hold power to account, Sanction the corrupt to serve as a deterrent, Improve transparency and accountability in the political party and campaign Financing, Promote efficient public service delivery and anti-corruption through digitization.