A Decade After the Mbeki Panel, Action Replaces Awareness
Johannesburg, 7–10 October 2025 — The 13th Pan-African Conference on Illicit Financial Flows and Taxation (PAC 2025) gathered policymakers, tax officials, researchers, and civil-society leaders to assess progress since the landmark Mbeki High-Level Panel report of 2015.
Hosted in South Africa, the meeting marked a decisive shift: Africa is no longer just documenting losses from illicit financial flows (IFFs) — it is building enforcement tools.
The highlight was the launch of the Anti-IFFs Policy Tracker, a digital platform that will hold governments accountable for implementing tax-justice and transparency measures.
The Anti-IFFs Policy Tracker: Africa’s New Transparency Engine
The Anti-IFFs Policy Tracker, unveiled by Thulani Shongwe of the African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF) and coordinated by the Tax Justice Network Africa (TJNA), provides a continent-wide dashboard of national progress on anti-IFF reforms.
Accessible at policytracker.africa, it tracks indicators such as:
- Beneficial-ownership transparency laws and registries
- Exchange of information frameworks with other tax jurisdictions
- Transfer pricing regulations and treaty provisions
- Anti-money-laundering and customs-tax cooperation
By translating policy progress into comparable scores, the Tracker turns rhetoric into measurable accountability. Countries like Liberia, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa are early adopters, setting a new benchmark for fiscal transparency in Africa.
“We’ve spent ten years talking about how much money leaves Africa. The Tracker will tell us who is doing something about it,” said one delegate.
Closing the Implementation Gap in the Fight Against Illicit Financial Flows
The 2025 theme — “Honouring a Legacy, Building a Future” — reflected how the conversation has matured from awareness to execution.
While the UNCTAD 2024 estimate places illicit outflows at US $88.6 billion annually, delegates agreed that policy enforcement remains the weak link.
Key recommendations included:
- Sanctioning false declarations and enforcing ownership disclosure.
- Integrating tax, customs, and financial-intelligence data.
- Building specialized audit and litigation teams inside revenue authorities.
Three Frontlines in Africa’s IFF Response
- Beneficial Ownership and Financial Transparency
Over 25 African countries have passed disclosure laws, but registries remain uneven. Experts called for verified, public databases and regional data interoperability.
Civil society urged governments to adopt a “no registry, no license” principle for companies operating in high-risk sectors like mining and oil.
- Digital Taxation and Profit Shifting
Speakers linked digital taxation to the IFF agenda, arguing that remote transactions must generate tax revenue where markets are located.
Delegates backed Significant Economic Presence (SEP) rules while warning against overlap between VAT on e-servicesand corporate digital taxation.
The issue ties directly to the UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation (2025–2027), where Africa seeks fairer allocation of taxing rights.
- Trade Misinvoicing and Commodity Leakages
Trade mispricing, especially in mineral exports, remains Africa’s largest IFF channel.
PAC 2025 endorsed practical solutions:
- Customs–tax data fusion systems to flag suspicious pricing.
- Regional price benchmarks for commodities.
- Post-clearance audits and joint investigations across borders.
Early pilots in Zambia and Tanzania show that coordinated audits can recover millions in lost royalties.
UN Tax Convention 2025–2027: A New Global Arena
The conference coincided with the start of UN tax convention negotiations, where Africa seeks to institutionalize source-based taxation, automatic information exchange, and fair dispute resolution.
For many delegates, aligning national reforms and the new Policy Tracker with this process ensures Africa’s voice carries weight in shaping global tax rules.
Collaboration, Capacity, and Political Will
Speakers praised growing synergy between:
- ATAF (technical policy support),
- TJNA (advocacy and monitoring),
- UNECA and AU commissions (standard setting), and
- National revenue authorities (implementation).
Yet they cautioned that without political will and budget commitment, even the best policies remain symbolic.
Transparency must be matched with enforcement and prosecution to deter illicit flows.
Civil Society and Citizen Accountability
Civil-society groups view the Tracker as a citizen-empowerment tool.
By publishing comparative data, it enables journalists and NGOs to ask hard questions about performance and resource losses.
“Transparency without follow-through is voyeurism,” a TJNA panelist said. “With this tool, scrutiny becomes power.”
Political Resistance and the Road Ahead
Delegates also confronted domestic and external resistance:
- Political elites benefiting from secrecy,
- Inertia within under-resourced tax agencies, and
- Global financial centres that profit from opacity.
PAC 2025 framed IFFs as a sovereignty issue — who gets to tax African wealth — and stressed that only regional unitywill give the continent negotiating leverage.
From Knowledge to Enforcement
Ten years after the Mbeki Panel, PAC 2025 demonstrated that Africa is entering the enforcement era of its IFF agenda.
The Anti-IFFs Policy Tracker transforms lofty declarations into measurable benchmarks, while cooperation under the UN tax convention offers a pathway to embed equity in global tax governance.
If governments sustain momentum — strengthening ownership registries, coordinating audits, and protecting fiscal data — Africa can finally translate a decade of advocacy into tangible revenues and restored sovereignty.
