The Editor’s Desk: Corruption won’t fly in Africa anymore

DUBLIN — Some of those allegedly involved in a $2 billion fraud in Mozambique learned this week that corruption won't fly in Africa anymore – they were arrested at the airport. Former Mozambique finance minister Manuel Chang was arrested during a layover in South Africa – he's now awaiting extradition – while Lebanese shipbuilding executive Jean Boustani was arrested in the Dominican Republic and extradited to New York. These arrests highlight a growing international trend: those responsible for massive public frauds (like 1MDB in Malaysia) are being held to account, many of them in their personal capacity. In this episode, Alec Hogg and I discuss the wave of improved governance and accountability that seems to be sweeping Africa. We look at the contested election in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the African Union's unprecedented willingness to intervene, as well as the arrests in the Mozambique fraud. We wrap up with a discussion of that consummate survivor, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who this week announced mass layoffs at Tesla and warned of a difficult path ahead. – Felicity Duncan

Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the Editor's Desk. This is BizNews Radio. I'm Felicity Duncan and with me on the line, Alec Hogg. Alec, it was a big week in African politics this week so let's start with a discussion about elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). There was an election process that was really marked by disturbances and complaints. There were reports of violence, there were reports of irregularities so, it was a troubled election and the results announced to widespread shock. This has caused a knock-on effect and what we saw this week that was very interesting was the African Union actually coming out and directly criticising what's happening in the DRC saying, 'look you need to delay the reporting of these election results – you need to delay any changes in government, until we can figure out what happened here.' What does this tell you about the state of governance in the rest of Africa?  

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