Aiming at reducing unfair tax practices through evidence-based research and policy advocacy to build capacity for monitoring fairness and transparency within the tax system as well as influencing policies on revenue generation.
Tobacco Tax Advocacy in Africa
Since 2017, Tax Justice Network Africa (TJNA), in collaboration with its members; National Taxpayers Association (NTA) – Kenya, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) – Nigeria, Centre for Trade Policy and Development (CTPD) - Zambia, Bureau De Liaison Avec Le Parlement De La Conference Episcopale Nationale Du Congo (BLP/CENCO) – DRC, Initiative Locale Pour Le Developpement Integre (ILDI)-DRC and Vision for Alternative Development (VALD) – Ghana, is implementing a project entitled ‘Tobacco Tax Advocacy in Africa’ funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).
The primary objective of the project is to strengthen advocacy towards tobacco tax policy as an effective means of capturing significant revenue, reducing the impact of tobacco's cost in terms of healthcare costs and lost productivity, and protecting public health. A secondary objective is to change the perspective that multinational tobacco companies are legitimate stakeholders in policy discussions, given the harm they cause to the country and the deceptive tactics they use to avoid taxes and shift revenue overseas.
The specific objectives attached to the project are as follows:
- Selected members of TJNA continue to remain an essential and trusted government resource on tobacco tax and tobacco economics in their respective countries
- Affordability of tobacco reduced significantly in five selected countries
- A broader tax and economic justice community in Africa supportive of tobacco taxation
- To reduce the tobacco industry’s influence in the development and implementation of tobacco tax policies.
Scaling Up Tax Justice
This project seeks to scale up national-level civil society engagement for tax justice by strengthening the capacity for research and advocacy of selected CSOs member organisations in Tunisia, Cameroon, Senegal and Kenya.
This project is in its second phase and is funded by NORAD. It seeks to build on the gains of the first phase, which ran from 2018 to 2019. The project aims to consolidate the capacities developed in the first phase and support members translate the research outputs into concrete advocacy and mobilisation strategy.
The emphasis will be to deepen and expand research, evidence-based advocacy, and policy engagement mostly at national levels and in some instances at the regional level in tracking policies towards fair taxes, advocating for the effective and efficient administration of tax incentives and Double Tax Agreements (DTA) with members in Senegal, Cameroon and Tunisia and in the East African Region. Activities in this second phase will contribute to expanding analysis and reporting on policies towards fair taxation using the Tax Monitor (FTM) tool, pursue litigation strategies on Double Tax Agreements (DTA) and engage with policymakers to implement policies that address harmful impacts of tax incentives as well as implementing national level FTM. The project aligns to TJNA and its partners’ strategies to increase awareness; build alliances; increase capacity, and generate knowledge on tax justice and IFFs. Building on the foundation of phase one, phase two of this project will focus on four countries including deepening engagement in the three previous countries (Senegal, Tunisia and Cameroon) and adding Kenya and the EAC Region. Additionally, TJNA will in this project invest in strengthening the secretariat’s institutional capacity and financial resilience to provide effective technical backstopping and programming support to members based on recommendations of the recent organisational capacity assessment.
