The illegal wildlife trade threatens biodiversity and security worldwide. Criminal networks pocket billions of dollars in illicit profits from stripping the world bare of endangered species and corrupting politicians and public officials in the process.

Yet there is very little empirical evidence on the role of both ordinary citizens and criminal networks in the illegal wildlife trade. Our research aims to fill this gap.

In February 2020, Uganda made a high-level political commitment to work with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG) to strengthen the effectiveness of its anti-money laundering (AML) regime. Among other commitments, Uganda undertook to demonstrate that law enforcement agencies and judicial authorities apply the money laundering offence consistent with the identified risks. 

Corruption is frequently associated with money alone and the behaviours of a few individual “bad apples” operating in otherwise healthy governance systems. This is too simplistic. As the latest research shows, including research in Tanzania and Uganda on which this Policy Brief is based, corruption is a networked phenomenon. This Policy Brief explains what this means and its implications for anti-corruption practice.

This article presents comparative evidence about the relevance of behavioural drivers in relation to petty corruption in three East African countries. It discusses the potential to incorporate behavioural insights into anti-corruption policy-making.

Persistently high levels of bureaucratic corruption prevail in many countries across the African continent. This along with the limited effectiveness of conventional anti-corruption prescriptions call for a contextualised understanding of the multiple factors determining corruption-related decision-making.