Angola: Creating transparency

Corruption was extreme in Angola in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Each year, about US$1 billion of Angola's oil revenues, reportedly, were disappearing. Angola provides a case study in building institutions from scratch. Both Angolans - civil-society groups and journalists - and outsiders - nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), international organizations, foreign governments, and a few of the multinational oil companies - prodded the Angolan government to reform itself. A dysfunctional state has been driven by the combination of domestic and external pressure to take some initial steps - grudging and gradual but apparently genuine steps - toward accountability.