Audit sampling strategies and frauds: an evidence from Africa

Purpose - This paper aims to investigate how professionals such as accountants, auditors, senior civil servants and academics perceive the use of audit sampling strategies adopted by professionals to increase detection rates of frauds and corruption within the public sector in Africa. It also examines the respondents’ perceived values regarding the reasons for committing frauds, types of fraud and corruption, as well as the aspects of audit sampling strategies to tackle frauds. Design/methodology/approach - This research uses non-parametric statistics and logistic regression to analyse the respondents’ opinions regarding the state of frauds and corruption in Africa (particularly in Tunisia and non-Tunisia countries), the common factors behind people committing frauds, including the types of frauds and corruption and the respondents’ opinions on the use of audit sampling strategies (non-random and random) to examine the instances of frauds and corruption. Findings - The findings indicate that most respondents prefer to use non-probabilistic audit sampling rather than more robust sampling strategies such as random sampling and systematic random sampling to detect frauds and corruption. In addition, although there are some minor statistical differences between the countries in terms of the respondents’ perceived values on skimming fraud and on the use of audit random sampling to tackle rampant corruption in Africa, the overall findings indicate that opinions do not significantly differ between the respondents from Tunisia and other countries in terms of the types of fraud, the reasons for committing fraud and the auditing sampling strategies used to investigate the frauds. Research limitations/implications - This research serves as an analytical exploratory study to instigate further audit sampling research to combat rampant fraud and corruption in the public sector in Africa. Originality/value - There are few or non-existent studies investigating the application of audit sampling strategies in Africa countries, particularly to examine the application of audit random sampling and audit non-random sampling strategies to detect fraudulent activities and corruption. Correspondingly, this research carries strategic implications for accountants and auditors to successfully detect fraudulent activities and corruption in Africa.