EDITOR’S NOTE: The mother of all corruptions is right there in Addis Ababa — Azeb Mesfin, the wife of Ethiopia’s dictator Meles Zenawi.

ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (AFP) – Corruption absorbs up to 30 percent of most African countries’ gross domestic product, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa said Wednesday at a conference on combating graft.

“In most African countries corruption is estimated to represent between 20 and 30 percent of the GDP, that is astronomic,” Okey Onyejekwe, director of UNECA’s governance and public administration division, said at press conference in Addis Ababa.

The three-day meeting in the Ethiopian capital which wrapped up Wednesday was aimed at giving fresh impetus to the fight against corruption in Africa and called for a broader section of society to be involved.

“It needs synergies, to put together scholars studying corruption, political stakeholders and civil society representatives,” Onyejekwe said.

“The problem of corruption remains intractable in many African countries, and it is widely aknowledged that there is a need for more innovative, creative and strategic approaches to deal with it,” UNECA said in a statement.

The London-based Mo Ibrahim foundation issued its latest corruption index for Africa earlier this month and stressed that around two thirds of the continent’s countries had improved in the field of governance since last year.