If you live in Egypt for even a short amount of time, you will most likely find yourself dealing with one of the various arms of the Egyptian government, be it a traffic officer, a low-ranking employee or government officials. More often than not, a run-in with one of these representatives of Egyptian bureaucracy puts you face to face with the necessity of resorting to bribery just to receive services you are otherwise denied easy access to. Despite knowing that it’s “necessary” to use bribery to speed up certain processes or avoid getting into trouble, such instances often cause us to feel guilty, or to loathe the existing system that forces our hand — or a combination of both. Launched in September, “Ana Dafa’t Rashwa” (I Paid a Bribe), is Egypt’s first online crowdsourcing initiative aiming to combat the country’s widespread corruption by using bribe payers’ discontent to highlight the prevalence of the practice. The website allows users to submit reports documenting instances in which they paid a bribe for a specific reason, while clarifying the amount of money paid, where the payment occurred and the reason for the bribe. According…
Egyptians Expose Corruption by Reporting Bribery in Online Initiative
October 29, 2015
