A new distance-learning course being offered in Jordan aims to teach government officials and others how to stamp out corruption before it takes hold.
The five-week course, titled “Transparency in Infrastructure Concessions,” is being taught at the University of Jordan’s Atheer Global Development Learning Network Center in cooperation with the World Bank. The instructors are trainers from the World Bank Institute in Washington, and the course is transmitted to the University of Jordan via satellite.
The goal of the course is to identify strategies to defeat corruption in its earliest stages, especially in situations like Jordan’s current environment of privatization and economic liberalization.
“We’ve got around 30 people here -- mostly high government officials, secretaries general of ministries, board members of private companies, and others from the private sector,” said Hamoud Olimat, director of the development center. “They are all very happy to have the opportunity to discuss information with a mixture of people from the governmental and private sectors.”
The non-credit course is offered free as part of a special financial arrangement between Jordan and the World Bank. It is one part of a broad program to encourage and strengthen the democratic institutions of government and the public’s trust in them.
The content was tailored to help developing countries like Jordan improve their efficiency and adopt techniques to prevent and eliminate corruption. The course costs the university approximately $250,000 annually for connectivity fees, with the remaining costs subsidized by World Bank grants.
Similar courses are being offered in Egypt and Vietnam, but not through universities.
The University of Jordan’s development center, which opened in July 2001 with seed money from the World Bank and the government of Japan, also offers distance-learning courses on the development of democracy and on efforts to combat poverty in the Arab world.