Thabo Bester’s soapy-like prison escape in May last year and his equally dramatic capture in Tanzania this month are decidedly among the biggest talking points currently – not only in South Africa but also in neighbouring countries and beyond. Almost equally riveting has been Qatari television station Al Jazeera’s exposé of industrial-scale gold smuggling and money laundering in Zimbabwe, a scandal that has sucked in some of South Africa’s banks. The fugitive Gupta brothers have also been implicated.

A common denominator between the two scandals is the involvement of bureaucrats and politicians, as well as politically connected private individuals. In both cases, the monies involved are mindboggling. This is but the latest evidence of how corrupt elites are milking African countries dry. There have been the likes of Sani Abacha in Nigeria and Mobutu Sese Seko in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the past – and many more who are still at it.

Commenting on the malfeasance in Zimbabwe in The East African newspaper, a despondent commentor remarked: “The exposé left me asking if it were possible to eradicate corruption in Africa, for what is happening in Zimbabwe is replicated across the continent.”

But he was quick to answer his own rhetorical question by invoking the wisdom of the African sages of old who bequeathed us the proverb about the need to promptly kill a lion that has tasted human flesh, lest that becomes all it will ever desire to eat.

Now those who dabble in corruption do so brazenly. There was a time, The East African commentator insists, when corruption was conducted secretly. That’s precisely when we should have killed it; it’s almost out of hand now.

To illustrate how dire the situation has become, graft watchdog Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perception Index, released in January, shows that most sub-Saharan African countries have failed to make progress against this scourge, with 90% of countries in the region scoring below 50. The index assesses 180 countries worldwide, with a score of 0 denoting the worst level of corruption and 100 the cleanest governance. The only sub-Saharan African countries with a score above 50 are Seychelles at 70, followed by Cabo Verde and Botswana, both at 60, and Rwanda at 51. South Africa managed a score of 43, the same as Ghana and Senegal.

The bottom-most countries in the region are Somalia, with a score of 12, followed by South Sudan (13) and Burundi and Equatorial Guinea (both 17).

The revelations about the gold smuggling and money laundering in Zimbabwe explain how the continent bleeds billions of dollars in illicit financial flows every year – the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development puts the figure at $88.6-billion, equivalent to 3.7% of the continent’s gross domestic product.

It is therefore pleasing to note that this is one area that the African Development Bank (AfDB) has prioritised, with its latest initiative in this regard being the launch in March of the African Financial Integrity and Accountability Project, aimed at improving regional coordination of efforts to combat illicit financial flows and oversight of the management of public finances. The project will also support the coordinated implementation of the recommendations of the African Union’s (AU’s) High-Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows (HLPIFF).

The project will target selected AfDB member countries. It will be implemented in partnership with the Coalition for Dialogue on Africa (CoDA), a special initiative of the AU, the AfDB, African Export-Import and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. CoDA promotes open, direct and inclusive dialogue to further the work of the four institutions on peace, security, governance and development issues. It serves as the secretariat of the AU’s HLPIFF.