Senior Minister Yaw Osafo Maafo has indicated that the prevailing weak internal audit regime on the African continent is partly to blame for the high spate of corruption.
He therefore appealed to governments and institutions on the continent to begin to strengthen their internal audit systems so as to help save the region huge sums of money that are lost due to corruption and bribery.
Mr. Osafo Maafo disclosed this while delivering a keynote address on Friday in Accra during the closing ceremony of the Fourth Annual Conference of the African Federation of Institutes of Internal Auditors (AFIIA).
The conference, held in collaboration with the Institute of Internal Auditors Ghana (IIA-Ghana) under the theme: ‘Enhancing Governance Effectiveness with Insightful Internal Audit,’ brought together participants from about 30 African countries, Austria and the United Kingdom (UK).
Mr. Osafo-Maafo indicated that the corruption menace facing Africa was due to weak systems and that there was the need to expand the boundary of good governance for stakeholders in the fight against corruption.
According to the Senior Minister, due to political and ethnic affiliations, many internal auditors on the continent, had refused to come out with true findings of their investigations.
He appealed to internal auditors across the continent to help save their institutions and governments some revenues by protecting the public purse through professionalism in their field of work.
“Good internal audit helps to save institutions a big sum of money through effective findings and diligence,” he said, adding that “practitioners are expected to function to safeguard and strengthen the scope of knowledge through quality counseling to management.