In 2023, the forum was organised by the World Bank Group’s Integrity Vice Presidency in cooperation with the World Bank Group’s Western and Central Africa Vice Presidency. It was for the first time that an African country hosted the event.

The forum focused on the topic of Collective Actions in an Era of Crises saw the participation of representatives of public bodies, including law enforcement and anti-corruption agencies, international and regional organisations, civil society and research institutions from over 70 countries. Different issues concerning the fight against corruption in Sub-Saharan African countries, constantly in the bottom of anti-corruption rankings, were discussed. They regarded, in particular:

• Enhanced anti-corruption effort of African countries;
• Importance of anti-corruption networks for promoting integrity in an era of crises;
• Links between corruption and illicit financial flows and development of a comprehensive approach to counter relevant crimes;
• Anti-corruption measures in the extractives industries in the context of instability, conflicts and violence;
• Ways to enhance integrity in public procurement, management of public finances and development aid;
• Adaptation of anti-corruption efforts to climate crisis, in particular, improvement of mechanisms for ensuring financial integrity of dedicated projects;
• Increased effectiveness of anti-corruption agencies and accountability;
• Enhanced cooperation of public bodies, including anti-corruption agencies, with private sector and civil society organisations and local communities on anti-corruption issues, as well as enhanced international cooperation in transnational corruption cases;
• Detection of linkages between corruption and migration etc.

The interventions in the plenary are available here.

The forum devoted special attention to the role of the youth in the fight against corruption. In particular, in order to ensure age diversity, a youth delegation of the Accountability Lab was invited to the event. Furthermore, in the framework of the initiative, an essay competition for young activists was held. Its participants were invited to answer the question: how the youth can interact with the State, research community and civil society organisations to take part in the fight against corruption and counter the negative impact of corruption on society? One of the winning essays suggested the following measures to enhance the engagement of the youth in anti-corruption:

• Gamification, for instance, development of interactive mobile games/applications imitating real scenarios of corruption offences;
• Corruption hackathons aimed at creating innovative technological solutions such as accountability platforms, citizen engagement applications and the like;
• Corruption-free business certification incentivizing organisations to respect high ethical standards and integrity principles in their commercial undertakings;
• Transparency cafes, i.e. the places providing young people with the possibility to conduct public anti-corruption events thereby promoting knowledge-sharing and learning about corruption;
• Corruption storytelling podcasts to raise public awareness, stimulate critical thinking and encourage public discussions.

*The International Corruption Hunters Alliance (ICHA) is a global platform of the World Bank Group established to discuss, share knowledge and experience concerning the existing challenges, risks and opportunities to step up anti-corruption effort, trace illicit financial flows and control beneficial ownership at all levels. The ICHA forum was held for the first time in 2010 and since then has been gathered every two years in European and North American countries; in 2018, due to the COVID-19 pandemic the activities of the forum had been temporarily suspended.