The ugly underbelly of the communications revolution: corruption, cronyism, regulation and government (1999–2020)

Abstract

This chapter identifies how personal and corporate greed creates corruption in many countries of sub-Saharan Africa, its extent and frameworks for understanding it through the prism of the telecommunications industry. It looks at the mechanisms within the political economy that encourage corruption. It provides the different categories of corruption specifically found in the telecommunications industry including: how to obtain telecoms licences; bribery to get equipment contracts, using fraud to steal from the government and the private sector and predatory corruption used to threaten individuals. Each of these categories is illustrated with examples taken from the period covered by the book. The opening section looks at the most high-profile telecoms corruption case on the continent – involving Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of the former president of Angola – and what it reveals about nepotism and political patronage in Angola itself and more widely across sub-Saharan Africa.