Ghana should aim its fight against corruption at stopping public funds from being stolen rather than chasing them afterwards, advocates say, urging real time oversight of state finances.
For years, Ghana has fought graft mainly after the money is gone, through prosecutions, parliamentary probes and audits. Recoveries have been slow and small, advocates say, leaving the state to chase losses it rarely fully recovers.
The latest spur is the National Service Authority ghost names scandal, in which a forensic audit by the Auditor-General put losses at about 2.2 billion cedis, far above an initial estimate of 548 million. A headcount found tens of thousands of non existent personnel on the payroll.
Audits and investigations matter, advocates argue, but they come long after the money has vanished. Replacing managers, they add, does not repair weak controls, since new officials can exploit the same loopholes.
They want the Auditor-General and other oversight bodies to adopt continuous auditing driven by artificial intelligence and data analytics, monitoring payrolls, procurement and spending in real time and flagging suspicious activity before losses mount.
Early detection would save taxpayers millions and shift the odds against fraudsters who count on delayed discovery, supporters say. Preventing corruption, they argue, is cheaper than investigating it, and Ghana’s strategy should focus less on chasing lost money than on building systems that keep it from going missing.
