An eight-month training programme for senior leaders of Tanzania and Zanzibar's anti-corruption and economic crimes authorities concluded last week, in the presence of Minister Haroun Ali Suleiman (Zanzibar’s Minister for Constitutional and Legal Affairs) and Didier Chassot (Switzerland’s Ambassador to Tanzania).

Corruption is frequently associated with money alone and the behaviours of a few individual “bad apples” operating in otherwise healthy governance systems. This is too simplistic. As the latest research shows, including research in Tanzania and Uganda on which this Policy Brief is based, corruption is a networked phenomenon. This Policy Brief explains what this means and its implications for anti-corruption practice.

We are delighted to have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) in Zanzibar. This new partnership builds on our existing engagement of our International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) with the Zanzibar Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Authority (ZAECA).

Bila watu hufiki popote. “Without people or connections you won’t reach anywhere,” said a Tanzanian businessman participating in our recently completed research project on informal networks and corruption.

His words encapsulate something we see time and again in our research on corruption: that bribery is far more than just a brute monetary transaction.

Often more important, and far less studied, are the informal social networks that connect private individuals and public officials.

The Zanzibar Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Authority (ZAECA) and Basel Institute on Governance have today signed a Memorandum of Understanding to support Zanzibar’s fight against corruption.

The agreement covers a suite of capacity building and mentoring interventions focused on financial investigations, international cooperation to gather information and evidence to prosecute cases of corruption and related financial crimes, and the recovery of stolen assets.

The first Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) of the United Kingdom Serious Fraud Office (SFO), secured on 30 November 2015 at the Royal Courts of Justice, London, has on 26 August 2020 given rise to a plea bargain settlement in Tanzania. As announced by Tanzania’s National Prosecutions Service (NPS), this nets the Tanzanian authorities TZS 1.5 billion (approx. USD 650,000 or GBP 500,000).

A new article in the open-access African Studies journal makes a novel contribution to understanding petty corruption in East Africa. By providing evidence of behavioural drivers of petty corruption in Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda, the research could help in designing more effective anti-corruption strategies.