Corruption dynamics in Tanzania: Modeling the effects of control strategies

Abstract

Corruption can be defined generally as taking bribes, forcing out benefit, receiving money or gifts as favour in exchange for doing one’s job. Worldwide corruption is considered a problem that affects many countries in the world currently. Individuals loses their rights, lower community confidence in public authorities, termination of employment, absence of peace and security and misallocation of resources. Despite various measures which have been taken by different countries to control corruption, the problem still persists. The negative impacts of corruption are well known; however, little has been done on mathematical modelling on corruption, particularly the inclusion of mass education and religious teaching as a strategy for controlling corruption spread. In this study, the mathematical model for the dynamics of corruption in the absence and presence of these control measures are presented and analysed to determine which parameter are very sensitive to the spread of corruption and how will these control strategies help to reduce corruption. Most parameters used in this work are from different literature and some were assumed. The next generation matrix method is used to compute the basic and effective reproduction number which used to study the corruption dynamics. Sensitivity analysis results shows that, parameters of mass education and religious teaching are the most sensitive to the control of corruption. Also, stability analysis for equilibrium states by linearization, Lyapunov function and use of the Lassalle’s invariance principle was derived and the results shows that the corruption free equilibrium is locally and globally asymptotically stable when 𝑅0 < 1 and endemic equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable when 𝑅0 > 1. The model was simulated by using Runge-Kutta 4 th order in MATLAB and the results depict that when mass education  and religious teaching  are combined together as a control measures, corruption within the country is successfully controlled in a short period of time. The study recommends to invest more in provision of mass education to the citizens through creating general awareness to all and including it in education curriculum from pre-primary to university as well as to use religious leaders to teach their followers seriously about the impact of corruption. The numerical simulation results agreed with the analytical results.