Reflecting on 2026 and what is likely to be one of the most momentous years in geopolitics for close to a century, it is hard to grasp all the implications for the world and for Africa.

The first year of Trump Mark II has seemed like the US wantonly letting loose a raging bull into a shop of the finest antique porcelain. The porcelain represents the layered and delicate art of international diplomacy, the design wrought of international country strategy, which is then fired in the finest glaze of international law. It is difficult to see what will be left by the time the November mid-terms come around and restrain Donald Trump – and the world begins to piece together a new future from the broken shards.

One such shard is the Trump administration’s attitude to global corruption and the long-term impact it could have on a continent where Gen Z – the now dominant generation – clearly makes the connection between government corruption, failing services and a lack of investment in everything from infrastructure to schools and hospitals.

Armed with a new weapon and new source of information – social media – Gen Z has collated information from the Instagram and TikTok accounts of Ministers and their families displaying flagrant wealth, clearly in excess of a Ministerial salary, and used it to denounce these Ministers, bureaucrats and officials.

Drawing on veteran anti-corruption campaigners in China, Malaysia and elsewhere, Kenya’s Gen Z posts pictures of Ministers’ extravagant watches, bureaucrats’ cars and their prices on social media, posing the question: “How”? In South Africa, ahead of November’s municipal elections, voters increasingly link corruption to service delivery failures – from water supplies to potholes, electricity and housing – echoed in the Auditor General’s regular but dry reports condemning municipalities’ “fruitless and wasteful, irregular and unauthorised expenditure”.

One of many retrograde policies unleashed by the Trump administration is an executive order pausing enforcement by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Enacted in 1977, the FCPA has been one of the most influential US laws, introduced to curb the excesses of US corporate behaviour abroad after a government commission discovered that US firms paid hundreds of millions of dollars to foreign officials and political parties to secure business contracts and influence policies.

The FCPA, in turn, influenced the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) anti-corruption convention, which has become the international standard as, gradually, countries passed and enacted laws to ban their companies and company directors from corrupt practices while doing business abroad. One of the simplest and most effective anti-bribery Acts is the UK Bribery Act, a two-page law ratified in 2011.

Even as the Trump administration pressed pause, several countries, including most recently Mauritius, moved to align their laws with the OECD process. Arguably part of the motivation for countries to ratify the OECD process was the massive size of the fines – some in the billions of dollars – that US authorities levied at global companies: treasuries started to drool at the prospect of levying fines themselves. Perhaps the US Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), the leading FCPA enforcer, may have become too effective, as the administration sought to curb what it called ‘overexpansive’ enforcement that disadvantaged US firms. Crucially, the FCPA has not been repealed – just paused – and the US administration has now redirected FCPA action at drug cartels and transnational criminal organisations.

The FCPA has undoubtedly improved the global business environment. Gone are the days when a bribe paid in Nigeria was tax deductible in Germany, when West African Presidents had joint bank accounts with oil companies, as with Elf Aquitaine in Gabon and France, and where sitting Presidents’ children could take a suite at the Waldorf Astoria in New York – without raising an eyebrow.

The US DOJ and the SEC taking their collective foot off the pedal has already had an impact. A global anti-corruption campaigner attended the UN Conference of the State Parties to the United Nations Convention against Corruption held in Qatar in December, and reported that it was poorly attended by representatives of the Global North, notably the US and EU member countries, but well attended by representatives of African countries.

Perhaps this is a time where justice moving slowly and surely will continue to serve the clean business cause. Despite the diversion of attention away from global corruption, justice has claimed some substantial scalps – most notably in South Africa, where the Madlanga Commission of 2025 brought yet another layer of State capture to the surface.

Several infamous corruption cases involving significant major corporations concluded, or continue to bubble, in several of the world’s courts. Swiss courts convicted trading company Trafigura and a former executive in January 2025 for arranging bribes to officials in Angola, while in the UK the trial of former Glencore executives accused of bribing officials in Nigeria, Cameroon and Côte d’Ivoire is expected to continue until 2027.

Perhaps most instructive is the jailing of France’s former President, Nicholas Sarkozy – albeit for only three weeks – for conspiring to take money from Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi to fund his 2007 election campaign. Laws, unless repealed, can bite, even decades later.