The Catholic Church in Kenya has strongly backed government efforts to fight corruption, which threatens to cripple the economy and stifle development.
Over the past months, the government has been accelerating a war on corruption and impunity, arresting senior government officials, business people and ordinary citizens linked to corrupt deals. Some of these deals are valued at billions of Kenyan shillings and involve government departments and ministries.
“The ongoing effort to rid the country of corruption is commendable. We encourage the President and all these agencies involved in the war … not to relent,” the Bishop of Homa Bay, Philip Anyolo, said, following an extraordinary plenary meeting of the Kenyan bishops’ conference in Nairobi on 17 August.
In 2017, Transparency International ranked Kenya in 143rd place out of 180 countries in its corruption index. Officials at the organisation estimated that 30 per cent of resources for the procurement of goods and services were being stolen through corruption.
The government loses about a third of its budget of 608 billion Kenyan shillings (£4.7bn) to corruption every year, according to the organisation.
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