Abstract

Corruption has a critical barrier to Africa’s economic growth, costing the continent an estimated $148bn annually. This study examined the impact of corruption on the economic growth while controlling for key macroeconomic variables including inflation, trade openness, investment, and oil rent over the period 2010–2024. in addition to a panel study of four African countries- Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, and Botswana- the study made a comparative analysis of these countries to examine the individual effects of corruption on economic growth of the respective countries. Preliminary investigation supported using the Pooled Ordinary Least Square (OLS) technique for the panel data while the simple OLS technique was used for the country-specific models. The results reveal that corruption is commonly significant at the panel level while statistically insignificant at the country-specific level. Furthermore, the comparative analysis show that Nigeria had the highest corruption perception and that corruption impedes growth in Nigeria while for the other three countries with lower corruption perception, the findings indicate positive effect of corruption. The study therefore aligns with the inverted U-link theory that suggests a threshold relationship between corruption and growth. The study therefore recommends that African countries, and particularly Nigeria, should reduce corruption to its barest possible level by strengthening of anti-corruption institutions, enforce procurement transparency, and stabilize prices.

Keywords

Corruption, economic growth, grease-the-wheel, Threshold

File: 1788356220_7._WASMSR_Vol_11_1_.pdf

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