Financial Transparency Coalition

Looking at 2012, experts from the Brookings Africa Growth Initiative (AGI) and colleagues from think tanks based in the region have come together to produce this year’s issue of Foresight Africa, where they outline the top priorities for the continent for 2012 and beyond. AGI scholars assess what they see as the major challenges for Africa in the coming year and provide policy recommendations on how to manage these challenges and leverage opportunities to catalyze and reignite growth in 2012. Similarly, AGI and its partner think tanks identify country-specific challenges in Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal and Kenya.

A while ago we pointed to a study by Misereor that had concluded, on the subject of double tax treaties (DTTs) and tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs), that Only 6 percent of DTTs show a signature of a Low Income Country (with an even smaller participation of 3 percent for Least Developed Countries). The situation with TIEAs is even worse: There is no single LIC (leaving aside LDC) as signing party of any TIEA documented on the OECD website. . . . While G20 and OECD are promoting DTTs and TIEAs as centrepieces of a global standard on transparency...

The curse of exchange controls could be to blame for so many of South Africa's otherwise astute rich falling for Barry Tannenbaum's wiles. It seems Tannenbaum offered investors a conduit called transfer pricing to take their money out of the country. The aim was to shift offshore some of the enormous profits he promised them.