Financial Transparency Coalition

Tax Justice Network – Africa in partnership with the Centre for Film and Media Studies at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and the Open Society Foundation of South Africa, invites suitably qualified African journalists to participate in an upcoming workshop on taxation, illicit financial outflows (IFFs) and their implications for Africa’s development. The workshop

We are delighted to issue a call to journalists and campaigners to attend the fifth Illicit Finance Journalism Programme. TJN’s financial investigative journalism training course takes place in London between Tuesday 12 May – Friday 15 May 2015 at City University London, Northampton Square, EC1V 0HB. This course is aimed at practicing journalists who have an interest in investigating business and the flow of money. Experience in financial reporting is an advantage but not a prerequisite. Class instructions will take place in English. There are bursaries for journalists from...

Illicit financial flows affect countries all over the world. Unfortunately, developing countries seem to suffer the greatest due to illicit outflows. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, loses roughly 5.7% of its overall Gross Domestic Product every year to illicit flows, according to research from FTC member Global Financial Integrity. Along with advocating for strong policy changes, it’s important that a robust and informed press investigates cases of tax evasion, corruption, and harmful tax practices that rob governments of much needed revenue.

The Thomson Reuters Foundation is partnering with the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) to hold workshops for journalists in African countries to improve their expertise in financial journalism (Full Disclosure: Norad is also a major financial supporter of the Task Force on Financial Integrity & Economic Development). The sessions will have a specific focus on how to track illicit financial flows out of the developing world. From Thomson Reuters:

About 100 journalists, spread over eight courses in different African locations in the course of the next year, will receive intensive training to hone their financial reporting and analytical...