The Office of the Auditor General (OAG) is Zambia’s Supreme Audit Institution (SAI) and is responsible for auditing the accounts of State organs, State Institutions, Provincial Administration, and Local Authorities, in accordance with the provisions of Article 212 of the Constitution of Zambia (Amendment) Act No. 2 of 2016, the Public Audit Act No. 29 of 2016 and the Public Finance Management Act No. 1 of 2018.
Each year, the OAG publishes the main audit report that documents outstanding or unresolved audit issues across ministries, provinces, agencies (MPAs), and other institutions financed with public funds.
Transparency International Zambia (TI-Z) has conducted this analysis of the 2024 Auditor General’s Report on the Accounts of the Republic to enhance the protection and accountability of public resources, and strengthen citizens’ demand for transparency and accountability in public resource management at national and local levels.
The analysis involved a meticulous review of the Auditor General’s report to develop a database of all identified outstanding audit issues. To ensure the accuracy of the database, the categorisation of the audit issues into themes was supported and validated by officials from the Office of the Auditor General.
The study ranks the performance of ministries, provinces, and other spending agencies based on the number and value of outstanding audit issues. TI-Z ranks the MPAs using a weighted Accountability Index that assigns equal weight to the proportion of audit issues and the value of audit issues recorded by a particular MPA. Therefore, the MPAs that rank highest are those with the highest proportions of audit issues and the highest value associated with those issues.
The analysis also uses tables and visualisations generated from the database.
