Africa’s Finance Ministers call for heightened capacity building to strengthen tax cooperation among African countries

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African Ministers of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development have called on TJNA alongside other tax justice partners to enhance cooperation with governments to ensure that African countries have adequate capacity to advance sustainable domestic resource mobilisation and tax cooperation.  

This was revealed at the 56th session of the Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development that was held in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe from February 28 to March 1, 2024. 

In a joint communique released after the conference, the Ministers noted that constraints in debt, weak and inefficient tax administration systems, unproductive tax incentives and illicit financial flows have hindered the progress by African countries towards the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals and the aspirations of African Union Agenda 2063 by leveraging its vast resources.  

In the communique, the Ministers welcomed the adoption by the General Assembly of resolution 78/230, which called for the need to develop a United Nations framework convention on international tax cooperation as key to strengthening international tax cooperation and making it fully inclusive and more effective. They also welcomed the Assembly's decision to establish a Member State-led, open-ended ad hoc intergovernmental committee to draft terms of reference for a United Nations framework convention on international tax cooperation. 

The Ministers made a specific request to TJNA in partnership with the Economic Commission for Africa, the African Union Commission, the African Development Bank, the African Capacity Building Foundation, the African Tax Administration Forum and the West African Tax Administration Forum, to build the capacity of African countries and in particular in the areas of tax policy and administration, international tax cooperation, governance of tax expenditure, debt analysis and management, and countering all forms of illicit financial flows. 

The Ministers further called on the international community to take appropriate action at the national, regional, and global levels to address the menace of illicit financial flows. They also emphasised the need for a global coordination mechanism to monitor illicit financial flows systematically, including through the central collation, publication, and analysis of data on foreign financial accounts and country-by-country reporting by multinational companies. 

The conference was officially opened by Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa who called for home-grown initiatives to ensure Africa benefits from its natural resources. 

“We cannot afford to bury our heads in the sand. I, therefore, challenge you to pursue robust and innovative measures to unlock maximum benefits from our natural resources, which starts with the sharing of ideas through deeper collaborations,” President Mnangagwa told the Ministers. 

TJNA’s Executive Director Chenai Mukumba attended the conference and noted that the conference touched on emerging issues that were key to sustainable development in Africa. Ms Mukumba highlighted the conversation on the reform of the global financial architecture and lauded the significant role that UNECA is playing in supporting the Africa Group as they lead the reform conversations at the UN. 

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For more information on our work on the reforms of the global financial architecture, please contact Everlyn Muendo at emuendo[@] taxjusticeafrica.net.