Corruption in Logistics: Humanitarian Operations in Armed Conflict Zones of Sub-Saharan Africa

The Sub-Saharan Africa in terms of demography, boasts of an increasing population density of 50.8(people per square kilometre of land area), and also has a total population of 1,078,306,520.0, with an annual population growth rate at 2.7 per cent; comprising of forty-eight (48) countries that straddles 21,754,456.0 square kilometre, and a GDP (current US$) of about 1,709,948,446,225.3 (World Bank Report, 2018). With a plenitude of untapped resources (both human and natural), Sub-Saharan Africa is yet to be unfettered from lack of sustainable developmental progress and multifarious challenges – abhorrent levels of corruption, weak state institutions, continual gender gap, fragility of/or political instability of some states, high level of unemployment of people within productive age brackets, rising debt profile of many states, mismanagement of ethno-religious diversity, climate change which have deepened the scramble for inadequate means of livelihood, especially in the Sahel Savanna belt and many horrible indices - beset most states in the subcontinent from achieving/maximizing their potential in the comity of nations. Since the early 1990s till date, the numerous aforementioned precursory challenges have come to the front burner with attendant break out of armed conflicts on several fronts in Sub-Saharan Africa. Armed conflicts have assumed dangerous dimensions in recent years mainly in relation to threat to live and property and direct or indirect affront to power – democratic or military governments - in such situations. According to Violent Conflict Dataset – a report published by World Bank in 2010 – the typology of armed conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa are grouped into three types, namely; internal internationalized, internal and non-state conflicts, with each type exhibiting varying levels of intensity (from minor to full blown war) according to their specific dynamics involving state, non-state and international actors. 9 With the prevalence of armed conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa, though at a relatively increasing rate, there have been a plethora of cascading woes that have torn apart the institutions of state, thereby rendering most states susceptible to the far-reaching effects of corruption and corrupt tendencies with concomitant oddities. Armed conflicts often lead to destabilization of states and also actors find such outcomes as ‘lucrative’ for their respective endeavours without taking into cognizance the effects of outcomes on local population and the state. However, outcomes such as internal displacement of persons give rise to refuge-seeking in congruent communities (in most cases of minor armed conflicts) or bordering states (in most cases of intra-state and inter-state wars). Also, the issue of debilitating hunger and malnutrition of exposed persons often lead to high mortality rates; the problem of arms proliferation and porous borders permit infiltration of the local population by affiliates of actors in the armed conflicts; and as well as despicable reports of human rights abuses. The culmination of associated misery then ushers in humanitarian operations in response to assuaging the anguish of exposed persons in armed conflict torn areas of Sub-Saharan Africa.