Country profile - AFG

Corruption in Afghanistan

8 sub-national regions - 1995-2022. Latest country-level SCI: 50.4 (2022).

Grand: 45.5 Petty: - Latest observed: 2019

Afghanistan: key corruption facts

The most corrupt region of Afghanistan is Central (Kabul Wardak Kapisa Logar Parwan Panjsher) (49.3/100), and the least corrupt is South East (Ghazni Paktya Paktika Khost) (51.6/100), on a 0-100 scale where 0 is most corrupt and 100 is least. All 8 regions are ranked below.

  • In 2022, Afghanistan's national Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) was 50.4/100, on a scale where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 the least corrupt.
  • Most corrupt region: Central (Kabul Wardak Kapisa Logar Parwan Panjsher) (SCI 49.3/100, 2022).
  • Least corrupt region: South East (Ghazni Paktya Paktika Khost) (SCI 51.6/100, 2022).
  • Grand corruption (SGCI): 45.5/100; petty corruption (SPCI): /100 (last directly observed in 2019).
  • Trend: Afghanistan's SCI moved from 49.6/100 (1995) to 50.4/100 (2022).
  • Coverage: 8 regions, 1995–2022. Source: Subnational Corruption Database (Crombach & Smits, 2024, Nature Scientific Data), CC BY 4.0.

How Afghanistan compares: SCD vs. the CPI and World Bank

The Subnational Corruption Index is scored 0–100 on the same orientation as Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (higher = cleaner). The difference: the CPI and the World Bank measure the perceptions of experts and business executives and report one national number, while the SCI is built from what ordinary households perceive and experience — and it breaks Afghanistan into 8 regions.

Index Latest Scale Based on
Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) 50.4 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Households — perception & experience
Transparency International CPI 24 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Experts & business surveys
World Bank Control of Corruption -1.2 ≈ −2.5 to 2.5 Aggregated expert sources

Most recent year — SCI 2022, CPI 2022, CCI 2022. The SCD also publishes region-anchored SUB-CPI and SUB-CCI series so the CPI and World Bank measures can be read at the regional level.

SCI trajectory - 1995-2022

Country-level mean of the Subnational Corruption Index, averaged across all 8 regions. Higher values mean cleaner governance (0 = most corrupt, 100 = least corrupt).

52 40 1995 2022

Source: SCD v1.0 (Comprehensive Dataset). Years where the panel was filled by inter/extrapolation are included in the country mean.

Regions (8)

Each row is a sub-national region with its latest SCI score. Click into any row for the region's full time series.

# Region GDL code Years Latest SCI
1 Central (Kabul Wardak Kapisa Logar Parwan Panjsher) AFGr101 1995-2022 49.3
2 East (Nangarhar Kunar Laghman Nooristan) AFGr103 1995-2022 49.8
3 South (Uruzgan Helmand Zabul Nimroz Kandahar) AFGr106 1995-2022 49.8
4 Central Highlands (Bamyan Daikundi) AFGr102 1995-2022 49.9
5 North East (Baghlan Takhar Badakhshan Kunduz) AFGr105 1995-2022 50.1
6 North (Samangan Sar-e-Pul Balkh Jawzjan Faryab) AFGr104 1995-2022 51.1
7 West (Ghor Herat Badghis Farah) AFGr108 1995-2022 51.5
8 South East (Ghazni Paktya Paktika Khost) AFGr107 1995-2022 51.6

Download Afghanistan

Per-country panel slice in CSV format. Columns: iso, country, gdl, region, year, sci. Direct dataset citations should reference the Figshare deposit (see How to cite).

Download AFG.csv