After two decades of economic growth, Ghana has gone from relative poverty to become one of West Africa’s wealthiest countries, but considerable development challenges remain.

STAAC, our flagship DFID-funded anti-corruption programme is uniquely designed to provide technical assistance to Ghanaian state organisations across the entire anti-corruption chain, from detection all the way to adjudication. This is intended to address not only the capacity constraints in individual institutions in the areas of knowledge, collaboration and systems, but also poor coordination between them, creating pressure between institutions for cases to progress. In parallel, we also work with civil society, private sector and media to enhance civic engagement and build pressure on the government to address corruption issues.

Operating within a highly complex and changing political environment, the ability to work in an adaptive and politically smart way that goes beyond traditional political economy analysis, has been at the core of STAAC’s success.

As stated in the ICAI review “DFID’s Strengthening Actions Against Corruption (STAAC) programme embedded interventions in continuous political economy analysis, so that it could respond nimbly and seize opportunities for progress when and where these opened up.”

STAAC’s design, alongside other DFID Ghana programmes was considered to “reflect global lessons on effective governance and institutional development work, including on working with political awareness, finding traction with units or individuals with a shared commitment to solving specific problems or better governance, and working adaptively by learning lessons on what works along the way. This approach is also recognized as more likely to bear fruit than top-down system-wide technocratic reforms.”

We couldn’t be prouder of our colleagues for their continued commitment to innovate, learn and deliver high quality results in such a complex and often very challenging environment.

A big congratulations to Alex, Jalpa, Ambika, Isabel Castle and the entire STAAC team who have worked tirelessly to make the project such a success.

The full report can be downloaded here.