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by Mukasiri Sibanda, Advisor Natural Resource Governance, Tax Justice Network Africa.
2020 has been like no other year as COVID-19 nearly brought the world to a halt. What started as a health disaster, spilled into a socio-economic crisis resulting in a massive reversal of the agenda to eliminate poverty and inequality in Africa. Civil society organizations (CSOs) were not spared. Long weighed down by shrinking civic space, the lockdown measures introduced to contain COVID-19 left CSOs starring into an abyss. The traditional way of advocacy was turned upside down and embracing the digital space became the new norm. Amidst all this, Tax Justice Network Africa (TJNA) alongside this year’s organizer, TrustAfrica, successfully managed to organize one of its flagship annual programmes, the 8th Pan African Conference (PAC) on Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) and Taxation.
Because COVID-19 elevated the urgency of domestic resource mobilization, befittingly the PAC focused on the extractive sector given many African countries’ dependency on resources. Rightly so, the PAC was themed “The Africa We Want Post COVID-19: Optimizing Domestic Resource Mobilization from the Extractive Sector for Africa’s Transformation.” The PAC was held a few months after the release of UNCTAD’s Economic Development in Africa Report 2020 which showed that tackling IFFs could reduce by half the huge financing requirement of US$200 billion annually that confronts the continent in its quest to attain the SDGs. The report revealed that roughly US$40 billion is lost annually from the extractive sector alone buttressing the point made by the 2015 report of the AU/ECA High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa that the extractive sector is highly prone to IFFs.
The 8th PAC had to adopt a unique format, a blend of physical and virtual meetings with the programme divided into country and sub-regional events during the first two days. The country events were spread across three different sub regions, East, West and Southern Africa. TJNA hosted the meeting in Kenya, the Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC) and the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) co-hosted the meeting in Ghana and the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (ZIMCODD) worked with us in Zimbabwe. Sub-regional events were co-hosted by Southern Africa Resource Watch (SARW) in Southern African Development Community (SADC); Oxfam Uganda and Publish What You Pay (PWYP) in East African Community (EAC); and a combined EAC and SADC event was organized by PWYP East and Southern Africa. Devolving the PAC allowed for more inclusive discussions that allowed us to scale up the conversation from country and sub regional level to the eventual continental conversation.
In an effort to further open up the discussion, youths were invited to contribute to the PAC through essays and blogs to reflect their concerns and views concerning the continent’s oil, gas and mineral wealth. The call for papers sought to understand how the youth thought the continent’s wealth could be better harnessed for transformation of the continent. Two learning clinics on data mining and analysis and data driven advocacy using social media were held for the EAC and SADC regions with Youth for Tax Justice Network (YTJN) and ZIMCODD partnering with TJNA to hold these events. 25 blogs and essays were received. These are currently being edited and will be published early next year in an online compendium.
Many times, CSOs are accused of creating echo chambers and not meaningfully engaging with stakeholders. Despite this rhetoric, PAC has increasingly begun to create a space for multi-stakeholder engagement on the topic of illicit financial flows and taxation. The conference drew participants from the African Union, the Senegalese Ministry of Economy, Planning and Cooperation, the Extractive Industry Initiative (EITI) secretariat, the African Tax Administrators Forum (ATAF), the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZMRA), renowned academia and various civil society organizations. Our aim is to work towards making the PAC the premier African forum for bringing together various actors to tackle the increasingly sophisticated challenges posed by illicit financial flows and taxation.
This year’s Pan-African Conference on Illicit Financial Flows and Taxation could not have been a success if it were not for the contribution of all our partners and co-conveners. We would therefore like to thank the African Union (AU), United Nations Economic Commission on Africa (UNECA), Global Alliance for Tax Justice (GATJ), African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF), OXFAM, Action Aid, Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC), Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), African Minerals Development Center (AMDC), Publish What You Pay (PWYP), Stop The Bleeding (STB) Consortium, Pan African Lawyers’ Union (PALU), Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (ZIMCODD) and Centre Régional Africain pour le Développement Endogène et Communautaire (CRADEC), Youth for Tax Justice Network (YTJN), African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD) and the East African Tax and Governance Network (EATGN). We look forward to seeing you next year!