Central Africa is the region with the largest concentration of authoritarian kleptocratic regimes, but individuals often do not fully understand how kleptocracy affects their daily lives and public services they receive coupled with a lack of civic education. The Anti-Kleptocracy Coalition of Central Africa was created to specifically address a common challenge and leverage the power of civil society organizations working together to tackle kleptocracy in the region. The coalition formally launched in February 2018 in Accra by ADISI from Cameroon, Sassoufit from the Republic of Congo, EG Justice from Equatorial Guinea, and Public Interest Law Center from Chad, it envisions a Central African region with updated strong democratic institutions that guarantee equal access to resources and rights.
In 2020, Friends of Angola joined, as a member, the coalition.
The partners have long-standing expertise fighting corruption and human rights violations in their respective countries. EG Justice has collaborated with lawyers and law enforcement agencies across the globe to bring cases before international courts to prosecute corrupt officials. The collective Sassoufit has been key to developing investigative reports about corruption in the Republic of Congo. The collective also provides technical and media support to Congolese unions and produces annual reports on human rights violations. ADISI-Cameroon makes monthly publications on grand corruption and harvested data for investigative reporting. Finally, the Public Interest Law Center from Chad has worked in documenting corruption cases, monitoring projects financed by multilateral agencies, and working through the judiciary to bring those responsible before the courts. Friends of Angola (FOA) will collaborate with other partners to raise the consciousness of the world community on the challenges facing Angola and to support Angolan civil society. This effort is mainly geared towards the youth, women, and former combatants in Angola and around the world by providing them with support, training, and resources.
The coalition partners include Global Integrity, who is providing strategy support and learning accompaniment, and the National Endowment for Democracy who is funding this initiative.
Open Central Africa’s goal is to provide a unique site to find stories about kleptocracy in Central Africa in simple language and easy to grasp, while also serving as a tool to call to action for citizens to get involved and demand greater scrutiny in their countries.
This site features four emblematic stories of kleptocracy in Cameroon, Chad, Equatorial Guinea and the Republic of Congo. With this site and by disseminating information on the cases feature here through social media, the coalition hopes to shed light on the looting happening in the region and provide citizens with information that they care about. We invite you to look at the stories and share them with your networks; you will find key information about what is happening in each country, who are responsible and have been the actions if any against the kleptocrats who are the protagonists of these stories.
Citizens need to know what is happening with their country’s resources, where is the money going and how they are affected by this plundering. With this information, citizens will be able to take action and demand change; effectively raising the stakes of stealing public money.
