The General State Inspectorate - Independent or Under the Executive - How Does It Compare with the Court of Accounts in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Abstract

The INTOSAI Mexico Declaration provides a summary of good practice for the independence of government auditors. However, as in many parts of the world, this ideal is not achieved in many Sub-Saharan African countries. This includes both the English speaking and the French speaking countries. The picture is complex, especially in Francophone countries where there is usually more than one type of entity that provides some sort of audit function for central government. The roles and relative strengths of these different types of audit institution (usually Court of Accounts and General State Inspectorate) need to be clearly understood. This paper provides an introduction to their roles and considers their relative levels of independence against the INTOSAI guidance on independence from the Mexico Declaration. It concludes that, despite recent improvements, neither type of organisation achieves the levels of independence envisaged by INTOSAI nor are they adequately resourced. As a result co-operation between all public audit functions is more important than consideration of their relative levels of independence.

Globalisation, accounting and developing countries

“…Reforms can have unanticipated and unintended consequences and become instruments that nullify their very aims (de Renzio, 2006). For example, the General Inspectorate of State in Benin -a key accounting institution reinstated within good governance reforms of the President -was used to persecute unions and other organisations (including civil society ones) demanding public investigations of financial scandals (Wynne, 2011). Similar cases were reported for anti-corruption institutions in Malawi -they were used to eliminate political rivals.…”

Neopatrimonialism, good governance, corruption and accounting in Africa

“…Local politicians may lack commitment to accounting reforms that erode their power to siphon public funds from government treasuries and extract economic rents within a façade of rules (Cammack, 2007). For example, anti-corruption initiatives in Uganda that threatened the regime’s patronage-based support lacked political commitment (Robinson, 2006); the failure of an Integrated Financial Management Information System in Ghana was attributed to politicians believing it was a technical matter foisted on them but their support waned when they realized the political implications of greater transparency and accountability (Wynne, 2005); in Benin, the Chamber of Accounts, the supreme audit institution, has never had the resources or independence needed to audit government accounts – it performs less than 10 percent of its constitutional mandate, allowing corruption and misappropriations across the government sector to thrive (Akakpo, 2009); telecommunications reforms did not require any accounting – making it difficult to trace where millions of US dollars were spent (Sutherland, 2011); and the General Inspectorate of State – a key accounting institution resuscitated within good governance reforms of the president – was used to persecute unions and other organizations (including civil society ones) demanding public investigations of financial scandals (Wynne, 2011). Such results suggest that contemporary accounting reforms, whilst admirable in principle, need fundamental rethinking in terms of their conception, design and implementation.…”

Cultural factors, quality of government and the effectiveness of Supreme Audit Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…Historically, these institutional arrangements, in Sub-Saharan Africa, have evolved influenced by colonizers. Thus, such process has resulted in arrangement of three main distinct models for SAIs (Stapenhurst and Titsworth, 2002;Wynne, 2011): Napoleonic (French origin), Westminster (English origin), and Board (hybrid). In the Napoleonic model, the SAI is known as the Court of Auditors or Audit Chamber, while under the Westminster model the SAI is designated as the Office of Auditor General.…”

“…In most of the francophone and lusophone African countries, such as Cameroon, Mali, Togo, Madagascar, Sao Tome and Principe and more, there is yet an additional public audit body. This is the General State Inspectorate (Inspection Généraux d'Etat), which reports either to the country's president or prime minister, but being independent of the state bureaucracy, and having access to all state institutions' data (Wynne, 2011).…”