Mali’s standing in the 2025 global corruption index
Mali has experienced a downward shift in the 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index released by Transparency International. The nation has moved from 135th to 136th place on the world stage. Surprisingly, Mali now finds itself trailing behind Niger and Burkina Faso, its partners within the AES confederation.
This index evaluates how different nations perform in their fight against graft. In the 2025 assessment, which covered 182 countries, Mali earned a score of 28/100, resulting in its 136th-place ranking. Despite various initiatives launched by the government to combat illicit practices, the country still saw its position drop by one spot compared to the previous year.
Challenges in governance and transparency
According to Ibrahim Harouna Touré, the regional coordinator for the Observatory for Human Rights and Peace in Gao, these results point to deep-seated issues regarding state management and openness. “There is a distinct lack of public debate and critical oversight regarding major state initiatives. When it comes to the awarding of contracts, accountability is simply missing,” he noted.
The civil society representative further emphasized that leaders of various public institutions are not sufficiently answering to the citizens. Ibrahim Harouna Touré added that there is a sense of “unchecked governance,” where individual institutions appear to manage public finances with little to no external supervision.
In his view, these persistent gaps in accountability and institutional transparency are the primary drivers behind the stagnation of anti-corruption efforts in Mali.
