Dr. Ihuoma Okorie

Short Bio

Dr. Lukiko Vedastus Lukiko is a Tanzanian legal scholar and academic in the Department of Public Law, Faculty of Law, Mzumbe University. He holds a Doctor of Laws (LL.D) in Criminal Justice and a Master of Laws (LL.M) in Transnational Criminal Justice, both from the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, and a Bachelor of Laws from Mzumbe University, Tanzania. His doctoral research examined corruption in Tanzania’s energy sector.

He currently heads the Department of Public Law and serves as Mzumbe University’s Data Protection Officer, Secretary to the Workers Council, and a member of both the University Integrity Committee and the Grievance Redress Integrity Committee. He is also Secretary to the Editorial Board of the Journal of Contemporary African Legal Studies at Mzumbe University. He teaches criminal law, public international law, international criminal law, legal research, law of succession and trusts, and oil, gas and natural resources law.

Dr. Lukiko’s research interests span anti-corruption law and governance, extractive industries and natural resources governance, criminal justice, access to justice, and environmental and climate-related corruption. He is Project Manager of the VLIR-UOS funded Re-Empower project at Mzumbe University and a Governance and Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence (GI-ACE) Fellow at the University of Sussex. He has published in the Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal, Journal of Financial Crime, African Journal of Legal Studies, and Journal of Anti-Corruption Law, and has participated in commissioned research for UNICEF, the ILO, the Tanganyika Law Society, and the Legal Services Facility in Tanzania.

Selected Publications

• Lukiko, L., & Kilonzo, C. (2026). Restoring public interest litigation in Tanzania: revisiting Onesmo Olengurumwa v Attorney General. Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1080/14729342.2026.2672319
• Lukiko, L. (2025). Resource contracts secrecy vis-à-vis the people’s permanent sovereignty over natural resources: a legal analysis of Tanzania’s extractive industry. Journal of Contemporary African Legal Studies, 2(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.70564/jcals.v2i1.84
• Lukiko, L., & Kimela, H. (2024). Legal dilemmas from Zitto Zuberi Kabwe v The President of the United Republic of Tanzania & Three Others: a case note. African Journal of Legal Studies, 16(1), 73-78. https://doi.org/10.1163/17087384-bja10091
• Lukiko, L. (2024). Fighting corruption in Tanzania’s energy sector: lessons from the Richmond and IPTL/Escrow scandals. Journal of Anti-Corruption Law, 8, 12-40.
• Lukiko, L. (2023). Parliamentary engagement in fighting corruption: a discourse on the Parliament of Tanzania. Journal of Financial Crime, 30(5), 1182-1193. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFC-06-2022-0130

Project Description

Defining Corruption in Context: An Afro-centric Perspective

This research project interrogates one of the most consequential yet least examined assumptions in global anti-corruption work: the definition of corruption itself. The prevailing formulation of corruption as the misuse of public office for private gain is widely adopted by international organisations and donor frameworks, yet it emerged from European and North American legal, moral and theoretical traditions in which the separation of public and private roles is treated as universal. The project argues that this conceptual foundation does not reflect African historical, social and political realities, and that its uncritical transfer helps explain why decades of anti-corruption reform on the continent have delivered disappointing results.

Working from an Afro-centric standpoint, the study asks two questions: how far the dominant global definition captures African realities and shapes anti-corruption practice, and how corruption should instead be defined in the African context. It examines how imported definitions can produce externally driven reforms that command formal compliance but little local legitimacy, and how practices such as gift-giving, kinship obligation and patronage, condemned outright under Western framings, may perform social, redistributive or governance functions that blunt policy instruments fail to recognise.

The research uses a qualitative, desk-based design grounded in interpretivism, combining a systematic review of scholarship on corruption, African political economy, post-colonial theory and Afro-centric epistemology with analysis of international and African regional anti-corruption instruments. A two-stage thematic analysis will yield a proposed context-specific working definition of corruption, contributing directly to the decolonisation of anti-corruption discourse in Africa.

Keywords: Africa, anti-corruption, criminal justice, extractive industries, governance, Tanzania