A leader squanders his country’s revenues from oil, gas, and diamonds on million-dollar mansions and luxury sports cars. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens struggle to find food, clean water, and basic medicines. Whole cities go without electricity, and roads crumble.
Versions of this scenario play out across the world, although in Africa the problem is most acute. Officials in resource-rich countries such as Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of Congo use political power and powerful allies in the extractive industries to plunder state coffers while their people suffer.
This corruption costs Africa dearly. An estimated 25 percent of the continent’s official gross domestic product—the market value of all goods and services made within the borders of 47 countries—is lost to corruption each year.
Yet legal responses to resource corruption remain relatively rare. Legal challenges have focused primarily on human rights violations and environmental damage associated with the extractive industries, rather than the corruption that fuels these problems.
The Open Society Justice Initiative is working to create a legal environment that blocks the theft of public assets, bribery, and money laundering in countries with abundant natural resources. This would be a significant step toward combating resource corruption, and diminishing the human rights and environment harms that accompany it.
