1.4.2: Economic Uncertainty and Corruption

Government corruption, particularly within some areas of Africa, has been a source of conflict that can lead to increased rates of poverty and wider levels of income inequality (Durojaye et al. 2025). Economic research of this type often focuses on African countries because corruption there is largely systemic. Countries are often undergoing a combination of economic restructuring and have weak institutions, and the private sector tends to be relatively small and weak as compared to economies elsewhere. One study used data from African countries to investigate the effects of corruption on economic growth and the distribution of income (Gyimah-Brempong 2002). This study found that corruption decreases economic growth through decreased investment in physical capital. That is, the money that would have been invested in physical capital was instead being used to bribe officials within the government. Statistical methods used by the researchers demonstrated that a unit increase in corruption reduces the growth rates of gross domestic product and per capita income by between 0.75 and 0.90 percentage points and between 0.39 and 0.41 percentage points per year, respectively. What this means is that as corruption increases, the rate of growth of the economy in a country slows. Secondly, increased corruption is associated with higher rates of income inequality. These results suggest that corruption is more detrimental to the poor than the rich in the African countries considered in the study (Gyimah-Brempong 2002).

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