Global Integrity’s governance research continues after its closure
Published on 6 October 2026 at 02:53 GMT
By Editorial Team SDG16
Global Integrity closed in 2023, but a research programme it helped establish continues to examine the distance between public institutions’ formal commitments and their everyday operation. The Africa Integrity Indicators project is now led by the African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP). Its continuation provides a concrete example of governance research surviving the organisation that developed it, while the closure raises questions about the funding of the networks and relationships around that work.
The distinction matters for anyone encountering descriptions of Global Integrity as an active organisation. Its retained website announces a December 2023 closure and presents an account of its research, local partnerships and learning. That material records an institutional history rather than an invitation to assume that the same organisation still delivers programmes. The continuing indicators have a separate institutional home and their own publication schedule.
Measuring governance in practice
The Africa Integrity Indicators project began in 2012 through collaboration between Global Integrity and the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. Its current project description states that AFIDEP has collected and published the data since the eleventh round, in 2023, following joint data collection with Global Integrity for the tenth round in 2022. Amy Miller Taylor’s later reflection dates the transfer of leadership to 2022, before Global Integrity’s closure.
The project describes 58 indicators of institutional practice, organised around transparency and accountability, and social development. The areas examined include public procurement, access to information, judicial independence, rights, health and education. These are specific dimensions of governance, rather than a single measure of corruption or a comprehensive verdict on a country. The social-development indicators were designed to complement the Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s wider governance index where other data sources left gaps.
For a public-interest reader, that scope changes the question being asked. An assessment of procurement transparency concerns the information available about contracting; an assessment of judicial independence concerns institutional arrangements and behaviour. Neither, by itself, establishes how many corrupt transactions occurred. The programme’s description connects its research to identifying an implementation gap and possible points of intervention, without making every indicator interchangeable.
Evidence behind the scores
The methodology gives each indicator a score, an explanatory comment and sources. In-country researchers assemble evidence through legal and scholarly material, interviews and media reporting, with peer reviewers examining the resulting assessments. The published design therefore offers more than numerical comparison: the supporting narrative explains the basis on which a score was assigned.
The project states that it concentrated solely on indicators of practice from its seventh round in 2019, because legal indicators changed little between years. Its methodology also identifies changes to particular indicators. Historical comparisons consequently involve the coverage and definitions used in the relevant rounds, as well as the scores themselves. A change in a dataset can describe a change in research design rather than a change in institutional conduct.
Publication dates also differ from observation periods. The methodology identifies the thirteenth round as published in 2026, covering September 2023 to June 2025, and says releases are moving to a two-year schedule. Its findings are therefore evidence about a defined period. They cannot automatically describe events occurring after that period or establish the present condition of every institution assessed.
The financing behind institutional learning
A first-person reflection published by Amy Miller Taylor on 14 May 2024 describes Global Integrity’s financial crisis and attempts to develop a transformation strategy. Taylor writes that, after core funding partnerships ended, the organisation relied on fixed-term consultancy work and project grants without finding an alternative revenue stream. Her account distinguishes the income that supported individual assignments from unrestricted resources for the organisation’s wider capacities.
Taylor also describes exploration of shared administrative costs and joint programme management with peer organisations. These were possibilities considered during the search for sustainability, rather than evidence that a replacement operating model was implemented. She characterises the organisation’s facilitation and connection work as under-resourced and identifies limits in its efforts to transfer power and resources to local reformers.
This is a participant’s interpretation of the closure, with the perspective and limitations that implies. It does not independently establish that one funding decision caused the organisation to end. It does, however, document the tension experienced between financing discrete projects and maintaining the relationships through which those projects operated. The research handover and the organisational closure are related events, but they describe different changes.
Accountability within the development agenda
The work relates directly to SDG 16 (peace, justice and strong institutions). The United Nations’ targets include reducing corruption and bribery, developing effective and accountable institutions, widening participation in decision-making and ensuring public access to information. These provide an international policy context for research into how governance functions in practice.
The targets distinguish several aspects of accountability that are sometimes compressed into a general claim about good governance. Public access to information concerns the ability to obtain material about institutional activity. Participation concerns involvement in decisions. Institutional effectiveness concerns how bodies carry out their responsibilities. Evidence about one dimension can inform an inquiry into another, while still leaving questions unanswered.
The continuing indicators are a research instrument within that broader agenda, rather than proof that the targets have been achieved. Their institutional home, supporting evidence, observation periods and methodological changes define what their findings can establish. Global Integrity’s closure ended the organisation; the transfer of its indicators demonstrates a documented continuation of part of its work. The remaining public-interest question is how that evidence is interpreted and used by the institutions and communities it concerns.
Written by a human author, edited with AI assistance.
Further information:
Global Integrity. Its retained website records the December 2023 closure announcement and summarises the organisation’s research, partnerships and learning.
Africa Integrity Indicators. The project description documents its origins, the transfer of data collection and publication to AFIDEP, and its substantive coverage.
Africa Integrity Indicators. The methodology explains the evidence structure, changes in indicator coverage and the thirteenth round’s research period.
Amy Miller Taylor. Learning with Integrity: Reflections on Global Integrity’s closure provides her account of funding pressures, the leadership transfer and transformation discussions.
United Nations. The official Goal 16 page sets out targets on corruption, accountable institutions, participation and public access to information.
