May 11 , 2019
By SELAMAWIT MENGESAHA ( FORTUNE STAFF WRITER )


The government will conduct a national survey in July to identify the most corruption-prone institutions and the overall level of corruption in the country.

The Federal Ethics & Anti-Corruption Commission will be conducting the third National Corruption Perception Survey with financing secured from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) under the Governance & Democratic Participation Programme (GDPP), a multi-year and multi-stakeholder programme launched in July 2017.

The survey will help the Commission measure the population’s experiences and attitudes on the nature and extent of corruption to identify how severe the problem is and to determine which institutions are highly susceptible, according to Tesfaye Shambo, director of reform and good governance at the Commission.



Expected to take half a year to complete, the survey is scheduled to commence on July 8, 2019, across all of the nine regional states and the two city administrations.


An international tender is underway jointly by the Commission and UNDP to hire a company to conduct the survey, which is in its final stages of completion, according to Tesfaye.

“We expect the hiring process to take up two months,” he said.




Once a company is hired, it will collect the information from six interviewee bases: public servants, religious leaders, workers at the non-governmental organisations, business leaders, job seekers and the business community, according to the Term of Reference (TOR) prepared by the Commission.

“No less than 10,000 people will be interviewed for the survey,” said Tesfaye. “We’ll prepare the sample survey based on a data we will obtain from the Central Statistical Agency.”


So far, the country had two similar surveys conducted by Addis Abeba University and Kilimanjaro Clinical Research Institute, a Tanzanian company. The World Bank Group financed both studies.

The last survey was conducted six years ago by Kilimanjaro with 10 million Br funding and showed that corruption was the third most severe problem in the country.

The survey has also revealed that the maximum level of corruption involved bribery of 2,000 Br and the justice system including the police and the courts were a major corruption-prone area followed by services providers at wereda and district levels, as well as the state electric power provider.

Ameha Mekonnen, a lawyer by profession and the board chairperson of the Ethiopian Human Rights Council, applauds the survey saying it could potentially show the level of the corruption in Ethiopia, which is known for grand corruption.


The 2018 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) released by Transparency International placed Ethiopia at 114 out of 180 countries. The report that ranks countries on a scale of zero for highly corrupt to 100 for the least corrupt awarded Ethiopia a score of 34.

“The most important thing is the actions to be taken based on the findings of the research,” he said. “All the necessary actions and remedies have to be taken to rectify the problem. “The Commission is a federal agency first established in 2001 with a mandate of running the gamut of prevention, investigation and prosecution of all forms of corruption in Ethiopia and prepares a national report on anti-corruption efforts across the country. But a significant portion of the power and responsibility of the Commission involving investigation and prosecution of all forms of corruption were stripped from its authority four years ago.

Currently, it works on advisory lable, preparing reports and receives complaints on government institutions to investigates cases and forward recommendations.

In the past nine months of the current fiscal year, the Commission has conducted 31 assessments and forwarded recommendations and is currently conducting 21 evaluations, according to Commissioner Ayelegn Mulualem.

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PUBLISHED ON May 11,2019 [ VOL 20 , NO 993]


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