Angola gets corruption website
2009-11-23 19:05
Luanda - An Angolan anti-graft activist on Monday launched a website to raise corruption awareness, days after President Jose Eduardo dos Santos spoke out against the scourge.
Rafael Marques' site will document illegal business dealings of government ministers and create a forum about alleged corruption in the oil-rich southern African country.
"Corruption in Angola is more than widespread," Marques told AFP.
"It affects every layer of Angolan society from the top to the bottom. It has become so institutionalised that one cannot conceive state institutions being run in any other way," said Marques, whose opinions have landed him in prison several times.
The website called MakaAngola, meaning "problem" or "trouble" in Kimbundu, one of the indigenous languages of Angola, would be the country's first web-based attempt to stem corruption.
"We need to make society aware of the scale of this problem in the country; it is robbing the country of billions of dollars," he explained.
"I hope to provide a forum to untangle the web of corruption especially at the highest levels of government."
On Saturday, President Dos Santos told members of his (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) that corruption was squandering the country's resources and called for "zero tolerance" against it.
Two weeks ago, Transparency International's annual corruption index ranked Angola 162 out of 180 countries perceived to be corrupt.
Angola vies with Nigeria as Africa's largest oil producer but two-thirds of the population live on less than two dollars a day and more than half of the people have no access to sanitation.
- SAPA
