The General State Inspectorate - Independent or Under the Executive - How Does It Compare with the Court of Accounts in Sub-Saharan Africa?

摘要

The INTOSAI Mexico Declaration provides a summary of good practice for the independence ofudgovernment auditors. However, as in many parts of the world, this ideal is not achieved in manyudSub-Saharan African countries. This includes both the English speaking and the Frenchudspeaking countries. The picture is complex, especially in Francophone countries where there isudusually more than one type of entity that provides some sort of audit function for centraludgovernment. The roles and relative strengths of these different types of audit institution (usuallyudCourt of Accounts and General State Inspectorate) need to be clearly understood. This paperudprovides an introduction to their roles and considers their relative levels of independence againstudthe INTOSAI guidance on independence from the Mexico Declaration. It concludes that, despiteudrecent improvements, neither type of organisation achieves the levels of independence envisagedudby INTOSAI nor are they adequately resourced. As a result co-operation between all publicudaudit functions is more important than consideration of their relative levels of independence.