The Gambia’s fight against corruption is making progress and its ranking on the corruption index is improving, says Transparency International.

The country scored 37 points out of 100 on the 2018 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) reported by Transparency International, the global anti-corruption coalition. The Gambia’s previously scored 28 points from 2003 until 2017, and a record low of 19 points in 2008.

The Corruption Perceptions Index ranks countries and territories based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be. A country or territory’s score indicates the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).

The anti-corruption body attributed The Gambia’s improvement to political will and institutional reforms.

“In The Gambia political commitment combined with laws, institutions and implementation help with controlling corruption.”

President Adama Barrow has also talked tough on corruption, stating his intention to deliver good governance while “addressing the consequences of two decades of poor governance and misuse of the state’s meagre resources.”

However, while the new administration has undertaken certain initiatives to reduce corruption, recent allegations of corruption involving the First Lady’s Foundation and government officials have raised questions about whether the government is serious about tackling corrupt practices.

This year’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) presents a largely gloomy picture for Africa – only eight of 49 countries score more than 43 out of 100 on the index. Despite commitments from African leaders in declaring 2018 as the African Year of Anti-Corruption, this has yet to translate into concrete progress.

Senegal fared well (scored 45) in the latest report as it was ranked among the significant improvers on the CPI alongside the Côte d’Ivoire for the second year in a row.

Seychelles scored 66 out of 100, to put it at the top of the region. Seychelles was followed by Botswana and Cabo Verde, with scores of 61 and 57 respectively.

At the very bottom of the index for the seventh year in a row, Somalia scored 10 points, followed by South Sudan (13) to round out the lowest scores in the region.

Meanwhile in Afrobarometer’s first national survey in The Gambia in 2018, the results revealed that almost half of Gambians (46 per cent) perceive a decrease in corruption over the past year, but one-third (32 per cent) say the level of corruption in the country has increased.

Police officers are judged to be the most corrupt public officials in the Gambia according to the survey.

A majority of Gambians say the rich were more likely than the poor to get away with paying a bribe or using personal connections to avoid taxes (71 per cent), avoid going to court (75 per cent) and register land that is not theirs (74 per cent). Officials perceived to be least corrupt are religious leaders (11 per cent).