ATAF Executive Secretary, Ms Mary Baine, opened the ATAF’s first-ever Experts’ Roundtable on Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) on 2nd December in Pretoria, South Africa. The roundtable brought together leading experts and practitioners who have shaped and supported ATAF’s work on tackling IFFs across the continent.
In her opening remarks, the Executive Secretary underscored that the fight against IFFs is not only about money leaving Africa, but also about the domestic leakages and weak compliance systems that erode national tax bases and undermine the promise of the AfCFTA. She highlighted that Africa’s ambition under the Compromiso de Sevilla, to raise all countries above a 15% tax-to-GDP ratio, move the continental average to 18%, and mobilise an additional USD 10 billion in domestic revenue by 2030, depends on strong, modern, data-driven tax administrations.
“Illicit financial flows are not just a cross-border problem; they start at home. If our domestic compliance systems cannot close the leaks in our own economies, we will struggle even more against sophisticated schemes across borders. That is why ATAF is investing in strong, data-driven tax administrations as Africa’s first line of defence.”
Over the past 15 years, ATAF’s programmes and expert network have already helped African countries achieve USD 5.2 billion in additional assessments and USD 2.3 billion in actual collections, demonstrating that African solutions, led by African expertise, can deliver tangible results for domestic resource mobilisation.
The Experts’ Roundtable will now become a core ATAF platform for reflection, peer learning and innovation, starting with IFFs, and expanding over time to issues such as digitalisation, compliance management, legal frameworks, data governance, risk analytics and taxpayer services. By anchoring global conversations in African realities and evidence, ATAF continues to position itself as the continent’s strategic hub for tax knowledge, technical excellence and impact at scale.
