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Briefing paper

BP26: Corruption in Kenya, 2005: Is NARC fulfilling its campaign promise?

Afrobarometer Briefing Paper No.26
2 Jan 2006 Kenya
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Kenya’s NARC government rode to victory in the 2002 elections in part on the coalition’s promise to tackle the country’s deeply-rooted corruption problem.  Prior to the transition, Kenya was perceived as a virtual international pariah due to extreme levels of corruption, leading the IMF to freeze its lending to Kenya in 1997.  In 2002, Kenya ranked 96th out of 102 countries according to Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), with a score of 1.9 out of 10.   With the ascension to power of the NARC government came promises to reinvigorate the country’s anti-corruption campaign, and soon after taking power the new government launched high-profile efforts to tackle police corruption, and to re-open the investigation into the infamous Goldenberg scandal, among other things.  Soon after the new government took power in January 2003, a first Afrobarometer survey found that public hopes were high that the country was going to turn the page on this endemic problem.