Vulnerability and exposure to illicit financial flows risk in Africa

It is well established that illicit financial flows affect the economies, societies, public finances and governance of African countries - as they do all other countries. Following the ground-breaking work of the African Union and UN Economic Commission for Africa High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows out of Africa (2015), a consortium of stakeholders in Africa is working together to stem illicit financial flows and follow-up recommendations of the report. The consortium’s technical working group comprises the African Union Commission, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the African Development Bank, the African Tax Administration Forum, Tax Justice Network Africa, and the African Capacity Building Foundation. A global target to reduce the volume of illicit flows was adopted in the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The UN process has struggled to reach consensus on indicators for the agreed target 16.4, since high-quality estimates of these deliberately hidden phenomena are inherently difficult to construct. And at the national level, even high-quality estimates of the total dollar value lost do not necessarily provide a full basis for policy decisions.