The head of Africa’s tax administrators has told his peers that hitting the revenue target is not the point. Opening the 2026 ATAF Annual Meetings and Technical Conference, Dr Johnstone Makhubu said the number collected is “the means,” and that the measure of success is what citizens receive in return.
Makhubu, who chairs the ATAF Council and serves as Commissioner of the South African Revenue Service, addressed ministers, parliamentarians, commissioners general and development partners at a General Assembly that has drawn more than 370 participants. His message to each group was that the “revenue imperative,” the meeting’s theme, has to be owned by each of them in turn.
One continent, many revenue problems
He began by challenging the idea of a single African tax story. He listed oil and gas contracts in the Gulf of Guinea, informal and mobile tax bases in the Sahel, and tourism economies where value is captured offshore. He added mineral pricing in the Copperbelt, post-conflict rebuilding in the Horn and Great Lakes, and digital marketplaces “that has no address” in North Africa. Tax-to-GDP ratios across the membership range from single digits to above 30 per cent.
His conclusion was blunt: “There is no average African tax administration.” For development partners he framed this as an invitation, saying the most valuable support has always begun “by asking what our priorities were.”
What Sevilla commits members to
Makhubu said the Compromiso de Sevilla did not impose a revenue drive on Africa but “recorded what we had already decided.” He said members must now bring priorities that are clear, sequenced and owned at the top of their administrations. They should expect to be measured first by their own citizens, and the Secretariat, he said, went to Sevilla because members “were ready to be held to them.”
A message to ministers
He then turned to the finance ministers present. An administration, he said, can collect only what the law allows and the budget equips it to collect. He pointed to decisions on incentives, treaties and the resourcing of the revenue authority itself, and said the imperative “begins at the Cabinet table and on the floor of the legislature.” In return, he said administrations would offer evidence, data and candour.
Why a collective body matters
The case for ATAF, he argued, rests on shared exposure. Transfer pricing, digital platforms selling from offshore servers and illicit flows all cross borders, and the rules that govern them are written in rooms “where Africa is heard only when it speaks with one voice.” Partners, he said, should work with 45 administrations at once through a platform members govern, not one at a time through programmes they do not. In his words: “Nobody in this room is a beneficiary. Everybody is a shareholder.”
The social contract test
The sharpest passage concerned what taxpayers are owed. He asked what a market trader in Kumasi, a nurse in Lilongwe or a taxi driver in Tunis could fairly demand: “what did my tax buy me?” His answer was an open clinic, a road that holds through the rains, a school with a teacher and a pension that arrives. “Compliance follows trust, and trust follows delivery,” he said, adding that accountability for money raised must be matched by accountability for money spent.
Governance and what comes next
Makhubu also pointed inward. Members will elect a new Council this week, review the Secretariat’s performance and set ATAF’s direction. He urged heads of administration to take part “as an owner, with candour as well as support,” warning that an institution only ever praised by its members is one they have stopped taking seriously.
The three-day programme will test whether the rhetoric converts into practice. Makhubu offered no single blueprint, saying ATAF provides a place where “forty five different answers can be compared, tested and improved.”
