The African Organization of English-speaking Supreme Audit Institutions (AFROSAI-E) focuses on building the capacities of its members, for instance in the areas of regularity audit, performance audit, communication, leadership development, SAI independence, etc. The secretariat is hosted by the Auditor General of South Africa (AGSA), has 24 full time staff. AFROSAI-E earlier emphasized their objective to build a relationship with EAAACA based on an initial recommendation from their technical partner GIZ. Such a relationship should be developed in the AFROSAI-E spirit of smart partnerships. The research proposal should be seen as the starting point to initiate the collaboration by addressing mutual concerns of SAIs and ACAs. The research also contributes to AFROSAI-E’s objective to strengthen their research outputs.
The East African Association of Anti-Corruption Authorities (EAAACA) pointed out that at the Abu Dhabi (UNODC) conference in 2019, the discussions around strengthening the collaboration between SAIs and ACAs started. After the 2021 UNODC Sharm El Sheikh conference, EAAACA started developing a guideline for SAI-ACA collaboration. This document has been shared with AFROSAI-E and GIZ GFG in Africa. EAAACA also forms what is called the Asset Recovery Interagency Network in East Africa (ARIN-EA) which focuses on asset tracing and recovery. ARIN-EA also includes other relevant institutions such as financial intelligence units (FIUs), judiciary, public prosecutor’s offices, etc.
In Uganda, there is a tripartite collaboration between the SAI, the ACA (Inspectorate of Government – which also hosts the EAAACA secretariat) and procurement authority (PPDA). Due to the good collaboration in Uganda, EAAACA sees many benefits in strengthening the relationship between ACAs and SAIs.
The Conference of the State Parties (COSP) is the main policy making body of the United Nations Convention against Organized Crime. It gives policy guidance to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to develop and implement anti-corruption activities. At the 8th COSP in December 2019 in Abu Dhabi, a declaration was endorsed to enhance the collaboration between SAIs and Anti-Corruption Authorities (ACAs) to more effectively prevent and fight corruption (Resolution 8/13).
Against this backdrop, AFROSAI-E and GIZ developed a research proposal which aimed to assess the effectiveness of collaboration between SAIs and ACAs. This sould be done by examining the mechanism of referral of corruption related red flags in audit reports from SAIs to ACAs for follow up and investigation. The research would focus on six East-African countries which share membership in both, AFROSAI-E and EAAACA.
After AFROSAI-E, EAAACA and GIZ in earlier virtual exchanges mutually agreed that a deeper collaboration between their organizations generally and SAIs and ACAs specifically is desirable and necessary, it was agreed that a joint research on how such a collaboration could be set up in East Africa should be the starting point. However, all parties agreed that this initiative should be followed by medium- and long-term objectives, that ultimately result in a structured framework for regular and systematic collaboration.