African leaders, economists and tax justice advocates have intensified calls for new laws to criminalise trade mispricing. (Photo sources: Generated with Ideogram v.3 and Google Flash Image 2.5) 
African leaders, economists and tax justice advocates have intensified calls for new laws to criminalise trade mispricing, warning that Africa cannot afford to continue losing billions each year through loopholes exploited by multinational corporations.
The demand came during the 13th Pan-African Conference on Illicit Financial Flows and Taxation, held in Johannesburg recently, where delegates also launched a continental Policy Tracker to measure countries’ progress in plugging financial leaks. At the same time, African negotiators reaffirmed their united push in ongoing United Nations talks to rewrite global tax rules by 2027. This process could reshape how wealth is taxed and retained on the continent.
“It’s time for nations to write laws that say, in the business of import and export of goods or services or intangibles, to price a transaction in such a way as to avoid income taxes intentionally or excise taxes or customs duties or any other form of government revenue is illegal,” said Raymond Baker, founder of Global Financial Integrity and a long-time campaigner against illicit financial flows.
This intervention proposal set the tone for a meeting focused on progressing from a decade of diagnosis to one of enforcement. Baker argued that value and price had become “two entirely different concepts” and that every multinational he encountered manipulated invoices to shift profits out of African jurisdictions.
“It’s time to make that illegal,” he declared, calling for corporate executives to be required to sign legal declarations of compliance under penalty of law.
Most ambitious attempt yet
Baker’s proposal landed in a context where African institutions have spent a decade developing technical tools to track and expose illicit flows. The Policy Tracker, unveiled at the conference, represents the most ambitious attempt yet to systematically measure progress across the continent.
Developed by the African Tax Administration Forum, the African Union (AU), and the Tax Justice Network Africa, the tool translates years of anti-illicit financial flow recommendations into measurable indicators. It assesses four core areas: the strength of legal frameworks, institutional capacity, data transparency, and inter-agency coordination. Using a simple traffic-light system, with red indicating weak, yellow indicating partial, and green indicating strong, the tracker provides governments and civil society with a shared dashboard to identify gaps.
Namibia, Ghana, Liberia, Mauritius and Côte d’Ivoire were among the first countries to pilot the tool. Officials described how the process forced agencies that previously operated in silos to collaborate, map risks and share data.
“For us, it was like holding up a mirror,” said Lazarus Amukeshe, senior illicit financial flows officer, Bank of Namibia. “We could see where the leaks were and finally have evidence to fix them.”
In Liberia, revenue officials stated that the tracker had already prompted changes in data collection protocols. By 2026, the tool will be digitised and enhanced with AI-powered analytics, allowing countries to monitor their progress in real time and compare themselves to their peers. Francis Kairu, senior policy officer at the Tax Justice Network Africa, stated that the aim was not to name and shame, but to assist countries in transitioning from rhetoric to measurable reform.
While domestic reforms are crucial, many speakers emphasised that Africa’s fight against illicit financial flows is also unfolding on the global stage. In 2023, the UN General Assembly voted to initiate negotiations on a Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, a treaty that would establish principles for cross-border economic taxation and outline how future detailed rules, known as protocols, will be negotiated.
All 54 African states are participating under the Africa Group, which led the diplomatic drive for the resolution. The convention is expected to be finalised in 2027 and could mark the end of decades of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) dominance over global tax rulemaking.
“This process is historic,” said Mary Baine, executive secretary of the African Tax Administration Forum. “For the first time, every country, not just the wealthiest nations, has an equal seat at the table. The convention will define how international tax rules are made and whose interests they serve.”
African negotiators see the convention as an opportunity to enshrine source-based taxation, improve transparency through automatic information exchange, and ensure that tax rules reflect development priorities, not just corporate interests.
“We must stay united. If Africa speaks with one voice, we can shape a fairer system.”
“We must stay united,” the official added. “If Africa speaks with one voice, we can shape a fairer system. If we are divided, others will write the rules for us.”
The call for unity was echoed by former South African president Thabo Mbeki, who opened the conference with a speech that blended reflection and warning. Ten years ago, Mbeki chaired the High-Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa, which produced a landmark report estimating that the continent was losing at least $50-billion annually through practices such as trade misinvoicing, tax evasion, abusive transfer pricing and profit shifting to secrecy jurisdictions.
The report put illicit flows squarely on the political agenda and provided African evidence for a problem that had previously been narrated through Western data.
“When the High-Level Panel submitted its report in 2015, we sought to make visible what had for too long been hidden, the massive haemorrhaging of Africa’s resources,” Mbeki told delegates. “We showed that illicit financial flows were not an abstract problem but a real drain on our capacity to finance development, provide social services and build infrastructure.”
In the decade since the report was published, the term “illicit financial flows” has become part of the language used by finance ministries, parliaments and civil society. African governments have established beneficial ownership registers, built specialised transfer pricing units, and participated in OECD-led tax initiatives. Regional organisations have developed model treaties and tools to strengthen source-based taxation.
Tax Justice Network Africa’s “Stop the Bleeding” campaign has linked illicit financial flows to social justice issues, reframing tax policy as a question of equity and development rather than dry technicality. Yet the scale of the problem remains daunting. Estimated outflows have not fallen; in some sectors, they have grown, as new digital business models and crypto-assets offer fresh avenues for profit shifting.
Mbeki warned that raising awareness is no longer enough.
“We have succeeded in putting the issue on the global agenda, but we have not yet succeeded in stopping the outflows,” he said.
“The struggle against illicit financial flows and for tax justice is ultimately a political one. It is about sovereignty, about whether Africa’s wealth will continue to enrich others while our people remain in poverty.” He urged governments to deepen domestic capacity, invest in digital systems and human capital, and use tools like the Policy Tracker to strengthen their positions in international negotiations.
Politics of language
Speakers also revisited the politics of language. When Baker and others began campaigning decades ago, they deliberately used the term “illicit financial flows” rather than “dirty money” to avoid alienating policymakers.
But Baker argued that it is now time to speak plainly.
“Illicit trade is often illegal; we just haven’t written the laws yet,” he said. “Let’s fix that.” He outlined a phased approach: start by criminalising falsified trade in the mining sector, then extend the law to corporations above a revenue threshold, and finally to all businesses. CEOs, he said, should be required to sign annual compliance statements, backed by both civil and criminal penalties.
For many in the room, this was not merely a technocratic debate.
“This is our money,” said Advocate Mojanku Gumbi, member of the Secretariat of the High-Level Panel on illicit financial flows. “More than aid, more than foreign direct investment. We’re not asking anyone for help, we’re demanding an end to theft.”
The stakes could not be higher. Illicit financial flows cost African countries more each year than they receive in development aid and foreign direct investment combined, draining public coffers that could fund hospitals, schools and infrastructure.
At a time when many governments face increasing budget deficits, debt pressures, and rising social demands, the failure to tax cross-border transactions effectively has become a matter of sovereignty as much as an economic concern.
Criminalising trade mispricing and strengthening tax rules is not just about closing technical loopholes, it’s about reclaiming the resources needed to finance Africa’s development on its own terms. DM