The Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo Maafo, has identified weak internal audit as the reason for the prevalence of corruption on the African continent.

The minister, who stated this while delivering a keynote address at the closing ceremony of the Fourth Annual Conference of the African Federation of Institutes of Internal Auditors in Accra, also appealed to governments and institutions on the continent to strengthen their internal audit systems so as to help save the region huge sums of money that are being lost to corruption and bribery.

According to Osafo-Maafo, the corruption scourge facing Africa was as a result of weak systems, adding that there was the need to expand the boundary of good governance for stakeholders in the fight against corruption.

The minister also blamed internal auditors for failing to come out with the true position of their findings because of political and ethnic affiliations.

“Good internal audit helps to save institutions a big sum of money through effective findings and diligence.

“Practitioners are expected to function to safeguard and strengthen the scope of knowledge through quality counseling to management”, the minister said.