Africa

This report critically explores the IMF’s consumption tax policies and their adverse effects on borrower nations, particularly in Africa and the Global South. It examines how the IMF’s emphasis on consumption taxes like VAT, when used as a tool for revenue mobilization, often leads to regressive outcomes by exacerbating inequality, increasing poverty, and contributing to unsustainable public debt. Through an analysis of the global debt architecture evolution and a review of IMF-backed tax reforms across various regions, the report highlights the disconnect between the IMF’s policy prescriptions and the socio-economic realities of developing countries. The study underscores the need for reforming the international debt architecture to address the negative impacts of these policies and proposes recommendations for more equitable and sustainable debt and tax solutions.

In context, the African financial architecture and AMFIs are Africa’s response to the contemporary global financial architecture with privileged hierarchies that have historical roots in the post-colonial order of the post-Second World War era. Likewise, the claim that the IMF offers concessional loans misses the point of the historical and structural privilege that they enjoy. As such, an ahistorical approach to assessing the PCS status and treatment of AMFIs creates a presumed sense of superiority in comparison to other MDBs. Further, such an approach deepens the privilege and the structural and inequity issues in the current international financial architecture.

Dzah’s analysis succeeds in meeting the objective stated at the beginning of the book. It does so by diagnosing deficiencies of sustainable development and pointing the reader to a conceptual toolbox from which to draw ethical principles for re-imagining sustainable development. One angle of analysis that could have been addressed in this book is whether there are any drawbacks inherent to African ecocosmologies as a rationality for sustainable development. The analysis leaves the reader with an altogether positive outlook on the legal value of African ecocosmologies.

International law applies to the interchanging relationships and rules between states, including the establishment of norms and standards which govern their activities. This changing landscape of international law is recognised in one of the introductory paragraphs of this book: ‘international law possess an inherent transformative power to renew and remake itself if we are committed to reimagining the discipline and its fundamental characteristics, including the concept of sustainable development’ (pg 2). Sustainable development (SD) has been an integral part of international law discourse before the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) and the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). Hence, this book focuses on the ahistoricism and influence of international law on the environment and sustainable development in African legal systems through a Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) lens.

Today, November 1, 2024 two lawyers came to political power in Africa. In Botswana, Duma Boko President of the Umbrella for Democratic Change which includes his Botswana National Front swept to victory putting ending the 58 year-old hold on power of the independence ruling party the Botswana Democratic Party. So sweeping was Advocate Duma Boko victory that the ruling party is trailing fourth in the polls. To his credit, President Mokgweetsi Masisi conceded defeat even before the final results were announced and promised a peaceful transfer of power. Botswana therefore joins a few African countries like Ghana where there has been a peaceful transfer of power when an incumbent party loses to an opposition party.

The exponentially growing discomfort around Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) globally is an indicator of the undesirable effects that result from the IFFs, ranging from social, economic and even political consequences. There is a general concurrence that IFFs take away substantial amounts of finances from the developing countries, which finances could otherwise be utilised in domestic investments, provision of public services such as education, security, health etc., and offsetting foreign debts. It is on this basis that discussions about IFFs in developing countries should not be postponed.

April 2, 2025

 

Please join us for this virtual conversation on April 6, 2024.

Registration link here.

Guest Speakers:

Lori Wallach, Director, Rethink Trade Program at the American Economic Liberties Project

Daniel Rangel, Research Director, Rethink Trade Program at the American Economic Liberties Project

March 25, 2024

Research Assistant Person Specification

Position Title: Research Assistant

Project Focus: Debt for Nature Swaps (D4N) in Africa

Overview:

The Research Assistant will work closely with the supervising senior academic (Consultant) to conduct data collection and analysis for a project examining the landscape of D4N in Africa.

Most in the International Investment Law community would be aware of the ongoing work by the United Nations Commission on Transnational Trade Law’s (UNCITRAL’s) Working Group III on reforming the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system. This work has been actuated by criticisms of the ISDS system (or, more precisely, the Investor-State Arbitration (ISA) system). A major proposed reform is the establishment of a standing Multilateral Investment Court (MIC) to replace or co-exist with the ISA system.

The US Government announced on October 30th that the Central African Republic (CAR), Gabon, Niger, and Uganda will be removed from the list of 35 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries that are eligible for market access under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). The announcement came on the eve of the 20th AGOA Forum in Johannesburg, South Africa, on the 2nd to 4th of November 2023. According to the US Government, CAR and Uganda have engaged in gross violations of internationally recognised human rights. This paper reflects on the decision, which is not the first by the Biden administration in the last few years. This paper argues that the recent decision by the US is an example of developed countries using trade incentives and sanctions to achieve their geopolitical interests in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) under the pretext of promoting human rights standards.