Sierra Leone may be entering unusual times. At his inauguration last week, newly-elected President Ernest Bai Koroma promised his people "zero tolerance" for the country's endemic culture of corruption.

Accompanying the pledge is the discovery, by BBC correspondent Mark Doyle, of a confidential, presidential audit that candidly reveals widespread corruption, including a case in which almost $500,000 given by an international donor never reached the intended recipients. Corruption, the report argued, is "the greatest impediment to the country's development."

The idea may not come as news to aid workers, journalists and others who know only too well that countries afflicted by war and poverty tend not to figure highly in the probity rankings. But it may come as a surprise to many ordinary members of the public - precisely the people that aid agencies target as their donors and supporters.

This constituency, bombarded by positive messages and advertising campaigns about what difference their contribution CAN make to this or that child or community, are unused to the kind of warts-and-all picture of an African country given in a hard-hitting documentary recently. In a documentary broadcast on Britain's Channel 4, veteran Sierra Leonean journalist Sorious Samura argued forcefully that widespread corruption is the prime cause of Africa's ills, and that much of the Western aid pouring into the continent goes on bribes and booty.

Telling a tale familiar to the aid world but shocking to the public, the programme prompted two people to post comments on the Guardian website dedicated to the Katine project in Uganda, run by African health charity AMREF asking how supporters could know their donations weren't fuelling the bribes and embezzlement they'd just seen so graphically illustrated?

They can expect few explicit answers from the aid agencies themselves. When allegations of corruption beset the relief effort in the tsunami-devastated Indonesian region of Aceh, Oxfam suspended most of its work and set about explaining the problem and its response. But this sort of communication is rare, leaving the public to hear about corruption from the media, or not at all.

It certainly doesn't feature as part of the complex set of factors like politics, trade relations or climate change that - as aid agencies have been increasingly keen to point out in recent years - make up the reality of life in many of the world's poorest countries. It therefore follows that the money intended for humanitarian relief does sometimes fall into the wrong hands and that in some places - if you want to get past the guys manning a checkpoint or border to distribute aid to the needy - a bit of a sweetener is necessary.

But can you imagine 'corruption' being a key message in a corporate communications strategy or $50 worth of 'bribes' listed, along with the cost of a life-saving operation for a child, as one of the costings used by fundraisers to persuade donors to cough up?

"It's the elephant in the room," admits Dominic Nutt, giving a personal view based on his experience of working for two leading British aid agencies, first as Christian Aid's emergencies journalist and now as Save the Children's head of news. "There's always a sense, internally, of slight nervousness about it."

"Aid agencies don't talk about it because it's not a comfortable issue," he says, adding that the reluctance stems from a groundless fear that if everyone knew about corruption, no one would donate money.

It's not as if, away from the public eye, the aid world isn't aware of the importance of the issue, or taking steps to try and tackle it. Following the identification of corruption as a priority by the Gleneagles G8 summit in 2005, the British government has established an international corruption taskforce. The World Bank, a dedicated micro-site dedicated to anti-corruption. Meanwhile, the London-based think tank the Overseas Development Institute is conducting ongoing research into "corruption risk-mapping" in response to demand from aid agencies. "We're looking to fill an information gap," says researcher Sarah Bailey. "There's been a lot for development, but there hasn't been much for the humanitarian sector."

According to Christian Poortman, global programmes director at the leading anti-corruption organisation Transparency International, behind the scenes aid professionals are taking governance and transparency issues more seriously than ever, and trying to make their programmes as graft-proof as possible. "There has been a shift towards greater accountability over the past five years," he says.

But the failure of aid agencies to take the next step and communicate more openly with a wider audience is misguided, he thinks. "If they don't, the general public will get disenchanted with them," he says. "People are increasingly concerned with results, and I think this whole emphasis will continue to propel the debate on corruption."

From his position on the inside, Nutt agrees that aid agencies should be more upfront about the issue. "I don't think anything heals in a darkened room," he says. "The aid industry does itself a disservice when it doesn't discuss it with the public."

Yet he has noticed a change in attitudes since he entered the aid business. "When I started eight years ago, we were all more deferential about African politics," he says. "There's certainly an evolution towards confronting these difficult issues."

If he's right, could - and should - the aid world tackle what might be seen as its last taboo?

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