Rethinking Corruption and anti-corruption: Lessons from the Change Habits Oppose Corruption (CHOC) Program in Cameroon

This study is an analysis of the anti-corruption struggle in Cameroon through the Change Habits Oppose Corruption (CHOC) Progam, a three-year multi-donor initiative to develop strategies to combat and reduce the incidence of corruption in Cameroon from 2006 to December 2009. It examines the concept of corruption in general drawing from many experts and Aid agencies and questions the conventional anti-corruption approaches that imposes OECD/ World Bank models in developing countries. Critically looking at the CHOC program, it challenges the underlying assumptions of the CHOC program especially the existence of the political will of the Cameroonian leadership to combat corruption and the false causal relationship between poverty and corruption in Cameroon. Consequently, this work questions the effectiveness and relevance of the CHOC approach that fails to interrogate the underlying political-institutional incentives that drive corrupt behavior in Cameroon. It concludes that the CHOC program can achieve only limited, unsustainable successes in the fight against corruption in Cameroon because of the politicized nature of Cameroon’s corruption that is not accounted for in its overall program design