In this joint paper with Adam Smith International, authors Claudia Baez Camargo and Renee Kantelberg show how anti-corruption efforts require more than mere technical fixes, such as capacity building for civil society alone, to drive lasting change.

Anti-corruption work is often embedded in complex, politically charged environments. This requires thinking and working politically. Engaging with complex social and economic systems also means recognising that change is not linear or even predictable. What to do then?

Our years of anti-corruption research have demonstrated the centrality of having local stakeholders be in the driver’s seat for identifying priorities and finding solutions. This is how we have worked in Malawi in the Malawi Anti-Corruption Civil Society Support (MACCSS) project, funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and implemented with Adam Smith International.

This publication shares practical lessons and successes in applying this approach in the MACCSS project. It illustrates our joint efforts to navigate uncertainty and ground anti-corruption efforts in trust, resilience and local leadership. The key takeaways for practitioners who design or implement anti-corruption programmes (paraphrased) are:

1. Embrace complexity. Change is adaption and pivoting to reality, which is not linear. In governance programmes, unexpected developments and temporary reversals are signs that systems are shifting.
2. Local ownership matters. When partners are in the driver’s seat, impact and sustainability improve. This is true even if the route diverges from initial plans.
3. Facilitation over funding. Hands-on mentoring and relationship brokering build deeper capabilities than unidirectional training, grants and results frameworks.
4. Learning by doing. Regular reflection converts experience into strategy; failures become data for adaptation.
5. Build trust and coalitions. Reform depends on a collective effort with credible institutions and sister anti-corruption programmes. It also requires nurturing emergent anti-corruption networks, rather than merely building the capacity of individual actors.
6. Resilience grows from below. Sustainable accountability takes root when communities see anti-corruption as linked to livelihoods and services, not as an abstract governance agenda.
7. Gender and inclusion strengthen legitimacy. Integrating gender and social inclusion (GESI) principles by addressing corruption in mining, infrastructure and agriculture – sectors critical for women and marginalised groups – broadens both the reach and credibility of anti-corruption efforts.

Ultimately, the MACCSS experience reinforces a simple but profound insight: anti-corruption work is not about perfect plans but about adaptive partnerships. Change happens through relationships, experimentation and persistence. The task is not to eliminate uncertainty, but to navigate it with integrity and learning at the core.