As Africa seeks to achieve its economic and development goals, policymakers are becoming increasingly attuned to the profound problem of illicit financial flows IFFs - the illegal movement of money out of the continent.
While estimates vary for precisely how much this activity is costing Africa, the numbers tend to be sizeable. The Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institute suggested that between 1980 and 2018, around 1.3tn had left Sub-Saharan Africa through IFFs - "posing a central challenge to development financing."
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development UNCTAD estimated in 2020 that Africa sees annual capital flight of 88.6bn - and pointed out that curbing these flows would allow Africa to bridge 50 of its sustainable development goals financing gap.
Some analysts have suggested there is a direct correlation between IFFs and development spend. According to the UNCTAD, African countries with high amounts of IFFs spend on average 25 less on health and 58 less on education than countries with lower amounts of illegal financial activity.
Speaking to African Business from the Mo Ibrahim Governance Weekend in Marrakech, Pascal Saint Amans, co-chair of the Africa-Europe Foundation Working Group on Illicit Financial Flows, says "there are three main things driving this problem."