OWN CORRESPONDENT, Durban | Sunday 8.30pm
PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki opened the ninth International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) in Durban on Sunday evening, the first time the event has been held in Africa.
. The conference, launched in 1983 and held every two years, will bring together a thousand representatives of governments, the private sector and international organisations for six days.
The president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and President Festus Mogae of Botswana, and the head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Mark Malloch-Brown are among those due to attend.
The conference is sponsored by governments, international foundations and non-governmental organisations and organised by Transparency International, authors of the well-known “Annual index of perceptions of corruption.”
The ninth gathering of the IACC will place considerable emphasis on Africa, where Cameroon, Nigeria and Tanzania, in that order, rate as the world’s most corrupt countries, according to Transparency International’s index.