Corruption in Guinea-Bissau

Corruption in Guinea-Bissau is very widespread. The country has one of the highest rates of corruption in the world.

 Causes 
Corruption in Guinea-Bissau has many causes. As of 2014, government mismanagement had "created an environment conducive to corruption on a grand scale." This meant that conditions in the government made it easy to commit widespread corruption.

Corruption is also difficult to expose and fight. The country's judicial system is slow, and citizens have no right to access information. These conditions help to keep corruption secret and make it difficult to defeat it.

Another problem is that Guinea-Bissau is a hub of international drug trafficking. One source states:Abject poverty, state collapse, lack of [wealth] and endemic corruption have made Guinea Bissau a heaven for the Colombian drug lords.

 Rankings 

 Corruption Perceptions Index (2024) 

 Giving a corruption score 
In Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for 2024, Guinea-Bissau scored 21 on a scale from 0 ("highly corrupt") to 100 ("very clean"). This was considerably lower than the average score among sub-Saharan African countries: 33. Among those countries, the highest score was 8 and the lowest was 72.

Guinea-Bissau's score on the Index dropped one point from 2023 to 2024. Previously, the score had improved or remained stable every year between 2019 - 2023, after hitting its low point of 16 in 2018.

 Ranking countries 
In addition to giving each country a corruption score, the Index also compares and ranks scores from 180 countries. The country ranked first in this list is perceived to have the most honest public sector. In 2024, Guinea-Bissau ranked 158th among the 180 countries in the Index.

Among these 180 countries, the average score on the Corruption Perceptions Index was 43. The best score - ranked at the top of the list - was 90. The worst score, ranked 180th in the list of countries, was 8.

 Other measures 
In 2013, Guinea-Bissau scored below the averages for both Africa and West Africa on the Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s Index of African Governance.

References

Notes