Truck and Barter

Mohamed Ibrahim, Founder and Chairman, Celtel International writes in the latest Development Outreach;

"Any international business operating in Sub Sahara Africa needs to face the issue of corruption. From the beginning Celtel adopted a very strict set of six values, the first of which is: “We are open, honest and transparent.” We applied these values at all levels: from the shareholders and the Board to a handbook for every employee.

When searching for shareholders we sought institutions who could contribute expertise and guidance as well as money. Early examples included the Commonwealth Development Corporation (now Actis), the British Government’s development finance arm and the International Finance Corporation —part of the World Bank Group. Both had many years of experience investing in Africa and were rigorous in ensuring that every Celtel investment and local partner passed their transparency scrutiny.

Right from the start Celtel was run as a Western institutionalized company (it is based in the Netherlands). We believe good governance starts at home. So we formed a very talented and experienced Board of Directors, with shareholder representatives and strong independent directors from the worlds of politics and business such as Lord Prior, formerly a UK Cabinet minister, Dr Salim Salim, the African statesman and a former Prime Minister of Tanzania and Sir Gerry Whent, the original founder of Vodafone.

Some might regard such a heavyweight Board as restrictive to a start up company. But for Celtel this has helped navigate some of the complex political currents. We made it clear that any requests for political donations and the like would be referred to the main Board and discussed by the representatives of major donor nations. It showed everybody that we were serious about our anti-corruption stance and it was a great protection.

It also brought recognition to Celtel: when giving the inaugural IFC Client Leadership award, Peter Woicke, former IFC Executive VP, said Celtel is “a company that sets the gold standard for its peers anywhere in the world, a company that is a role model for others, regardless of sector, region or country.”

I don’t know whether every company can afford a corruption repellant board of directors especially when honest people are an endangered species in a lot of poor countries.