UN, New York

Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings Thursday blamed Western countries for much of the monumental corruption in Africa, saying they have a responsibility to curb the menace so as to promote good governance on the continent.

He told the UN Millennium Summit that Africa has suffered severe damage from what everybody knows is a global phenomena.

He said the proceeds of corruption have often ended up in the vaults of the financial and banking institutions of the Western world and this is causing untold hardship to developing countries.

For every dollar of corrupt money that is kept in Western banks, he lamented, one African child dies, two African children starve and three African children suffer from disease and ignorance resulting from lack of health care and education.

"There will be less corruption in Africa if there is no place to hide the proceeds of corruption or if the proceeds of corruption, once uncovered, are returned to their real owners, the people of Africa," Rawlings said.

He added that if developing countries are to assure their people decent quality of life, their capacity to govern responsibly needs to be reinforced especially through increased development assistance.

The absence of strong and resilient institutions in Africa, he noted, has encouraged corruption from within and without.

Rawlings cited a number of cases in which reputable companies and multinationals are known to have engaged top government officials in shady deals to gain advantage over competing firms.

Recently, he said, one Western company so seriously undermined a rival company from the same country in a bid for an important water project in Ghana by falsely impugning its business ethics (such) that the latter company, which had offered much better terms, pulled out of the bid.

The withdrawal from the bidding is a loss to Ghana as the water project still remains on the drawing board.

He also cited a recent World Bank report, which blacklisted 29 companies for corruption in contract- awarding procedures in an African country, the majority of them from developed countries in Western Europe.

Rawlings said he is convinced that Africa's political independence will continue to remain meaningless unless it is reflected in a transparent Africa.

But the temptations of the developed world must stop if this vision is to be achieved, he added.