The fight against corruption is unrelenting in Rwanda, and that is what gives the administration of President Kagame much credibility as a progressive African government, a government determined to avoid the pitfalls of so many administrations past and present on this continent.

Currently the fight against the corruption vice has been ratcheted up, with a number of mid-level government officials suspected of abusing office for self-enrichment ending up in jail or being prosecuted. A junior minister has lost his job for suspected involvement in a scam and a member of parliament has lost his job and his immunity on the suspicion he received a huge kickback to award a company a government tender.

We can rightly be proud of ourselves for being a society where there is very little public tolerance for corruption and all forms of abuse of office.

But seemingly lost in all the anti-corruption sentiment is any thought as to the root causes of the vice.

Why do people become corrupt?

Is the tendency to be corrupted an inherent condition one is born with? No, this cannot be the case simply because the statistical chances that so many officials now in problems were born with some kind of corrupt gene. Perhaps some individuals may be genetically hardwired to take bribes, demand kickbacks or engage in all kinds of larceny. But there are more straightforward reasons that require no complicated understanding of genetics to explain why so many of us succumb to the urge to take a bribe once we get our chance at occupying a public office – that is, such offices as where it is possible to extort a kickback.

In the case of Rwanda, and other African countries in general, too many of us may have grown up under severe conditions of material deprivation so that the opportunity suddenly available to make millions on the quick becomes intensely irresistible.

In other words, only a goat carcass placed in the reach of a starving hyena will disappear faster than a bribe entering the pocket of a government employee whose growing up experience partly consisted of walking to school four miles on an empty stomach after having participated in such domestic chores as fetching water from a well two kilometers away.

We are not saying everyone with a hard background immediately becomes a corrupt official when they become public officials. We are saying background is a powerful motivator of the choices we make in life.

However to limit the cause of how we behave to our backgrounds is to limit explanations for our tendency to corruption.

All around us, our countries’ prevailing socio-economic problems explain much. Lack of job security for one may tell us why a minister may resort to unbridled thieving the moment they ascend their exalted office.

A country like Rwanda is one where so many public offices are occupied by people with limited skills (partly due to the backgrounds we mention above); people who grew up in countries of refuge where primary and secondary school education conditions were appalling; or people who grew up under the domestic oppression of governments that made education the privileged right of the children of a few elites.

The fact that these limited skills result in mediocre performances likely to make one lose his or her job in a few months tends to be a powerful incentive for any official to line his pockets as quickly as they can.

But other powerful socio-economic considerations are at play when one is making the decision to take this or that bribe or to demand a kickback; to offer this or that tender; to offer this or that service.

In our poor countries we have the worst services in the world: medical, educational et cetera et cetera.

In Rwanda for instance to have Rama medical insurance – which caters for our so called mid-income people – is to be insured only for a percentage of costs; say if you occupy a bed in a mediocre hospital like the King Faycal and your bill comes to a million francs Rama likely will pay 30 percent of that, leaving you saddled with personal expenses of 700,000 francs.

That is more money for instance than a careful family with a combined monthly take-home income of Frw 780,000 will save in 23 months if they put aside Frw 30,000 after living expenses such as house rent, electricity, school fees for the kids, food and so on.

This means it may take only one illness in a family to entirely wipe out its savings for almost two years, putting paid to such dreams as building a small house in ten years and other plans.

There are yet more social pressures in an African setting that may propel one on the road to corruption.

Let’s say you are one of the only two or three individuals in your extended family of about forty individuals who earns what we call a good salary in Rwanda, i.e. from Frw 470,000 upwards. Before you know it there are requests from aunt so and so that her son has been expelled from school so can you help please?...and other such endless expenses like contributions to weddings (gutwerera).

The African state is a very poor contributor to the social welfare of its people and it is private citizens who pick up the slack due to the lack of even the most basic state medical care, help for unemployed citizens, help for aged citizens who have no pension plans, and so on.

By the time you are pushing 40 and you realize just where you are headed with your hopelessly inadequate income you may become so frightened about the future that you will take the first opportunity to pocket a bribe.

We have not exhaustively discussed all the reasons for corruption and we cannot possibly do so. We haven’t even begun to look at the inexcusable behavior of people who have already stolen a lot but who continue to line their pockets with ill-gotten gains.

As we pen off on this editorial however let it not be misconstrued to mean we are condoning corruption.

We are only calling attention to more of its causes.