In this part, we try to see what the government is doing to combat corruption. Not a lot of participants are aware of their government’s eforts to combat corruption. Nor do they trust the government’s eforts to ameliorate the position of their country in the Transparency Index. Thankfully, corruption does not seem like something that has a lot of impact on small businesses, and African SMEs are not “forced to divert its course and undertake some minor corruption actions” nor “expected by government ofcials before service is rendered”. However, some respondents confrm that they have to be “spending extra-money outside my budget or cut my budget to pay for unwarranted activities” with a few respondents (29,4% agree and 8,1% strongly agree) who witness that they “see constant harassment and intimidation of business person by legal authorities who often confscate business merchandise in name of unpaid licenses and other penalties”. Our participants (51,6%) warn however that “Level of corruption (in their country) will most probably deter people from beginning their own businesses”. This is acknowledgement that corruption is playing against SMEs and could potentially limit their growth.
Corruption Impact
We wanted to explore which in which areas is corruption manifesting itself most, so we asked “Usually corruption will (select all that apply)”
Figure 2.80: Corruption impact
The survey data points to the reduction of business revenues and afecting positive business performance (112 count) mostly, followed by having to fnish some formalities (111 count) as well as avoiding some unwanted taxes or duties (109 count) or landing on important tenders and/or business opportunities (104 count). On a relatively lower scale, we could also mention that corruption would manifest itself in assisting some small businesses to obtain some business deals (62 count) or helping protect small businesses in order to survive (30 count) or increasing business revenue (30 count).
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