Corruption hinders African efforts for development: Official

CAIRO – 12 June 2019: Head of Administrative Control Authority Sherif Saif said that the African countries suffer a lot due to corruption, which costs it millions of dollars annually.

In his speech at the inaugural session of the African Anti-Corruption Forum (AACF) that is being held in the Red Sea city of Sharm El-Sheikh, Saif added that corruption is considered to be Africa’s main challenge at the mean time, which hinders the African governments’ efforts for development.

Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi urged cooperation between African nations in the face of corruption, affirming the importance of concerted efforts, exchanging visions and enhancing coordination to curb corruption.

Sisi affirmed in his speech that "Egypt will continue to support the joint efforts to combat corruption at the African level."

Reviewing Egypt's efforts in this regard, the president announced "doubling the training grants provided by the National Anti-Corruption Academy for the cadres of African law enforcement bodies."

"Egypt also welcomes cooperation with its African brothers and the African Union relevant bodies to exchange the best practices in this field. In this context, we also affirm the importance of deepening international cooperation with the main partners of Africa at various levels to achieve the desired benefit in this regard."

Concerning the national anti-corruption efforts, Sisi said that "Egypt has come a long way in the past years in the fight against corruption in various forms, and has been concerned with conducting research, studies and opinion polls in order to track the causes of corruption and identify real measurements for it."