From data to policy: Building Africa’s evidence ecosystem for better tax reform

The global financing landscape for development is shifting, characterized by falling foreign aid and rising debt servicing costs. In 2025, bilateral aid to Africa declined by 26 per cent, while interest payments on sovereign debt reached 27.5 per cent of government revenue in 2024. This necessitates that developing countries find sustainable sources for development finance. Strengthening domestic revenue mobilization is crucial for fiscal resilience and financing African development. To achieve this, governments must broaden tax bases, improve compliance, and design policies to be fair and efficient while supporting growth and public trust.
The analysis highlights the necessity of administrative data for evidence-based policy. Decision-makers require data on how reforms affect compliance, the value of incentives, revenue leakage, and taxpayer responses to policy changes. Administrative tax data provide this evidence, allowing authorities to evaluate reforms, strengthen compliance, and design policies based on actual taxpayer behavior.
The workshop showcased research from several African nations focusing on three key themes: taxing small firms and the informal economy through simplified regimes, confronting international profit shifting using corporate and customs data to detect cross-border abuse, and strengthening tax administration by managing arrears and risk-based audits. The process emphasizes that evidence must be translated into actionable policy through strong collaboration between researchers, revenue authorities, and policymakers to build an evidence ecosystem for sustainable domestic revenue mobilization.

* Participants were at the Administrative Data and Tax Policy Analysis Workshop in Africa, Accra, Ghana, held June 11–12, 2026.
* Foreign aid to Africa fell by 26 per cent in 2025, according to the IMF estimate.
* Interest payments on sovereign debt reached 27.5 per cent of government revenue in 2024.
* Administrative tax data are records generated when taxpayers register, file returns, and meet obligations, providing a source for policy analysis.
* Research examined taxing small firms and the informal economy through simplified tax regimes and third-party data use.
* Research focused on confronting international profit shifting by examining corporate tax returns and customs data to detect cross-border abuse.
* A third theme involved strengthening tax administration, focusing on managing arrears, risk-based audits, compliance certification, and VAT registration thresholds.
* The workshop featured research from Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Rwanda, Eswatini, and Zambia.
* Anne Brockmeyer emphasized that administrative data are valuable assets for evidence-based policymaking.
* A key conclusion was that sustainable domestic revenue mobilization requires building an evidence ecosystem through collaboration between tax administrations, researchers, and policymakers.

The narrative demonstrates a structural challenge: the gap between the need for fiscal resilience in Africa and the capacity to deploy evidence-based policy tools. The core implication is that financial constraints are not solely a matter of external aid but fundamentally hinge on effective internal governance and data utilization within African tax systems. The shift from viewing administrative data as mere accounting records to recognizing them as strategic public assets is a crucial cognitive leap for achieving sovereignty over development financing.
The pattern identified involves an appeal to practicality—demonstrating that operational data directly informs complex policy goals like combating profit shifting or managing informal economies. This functions to frame abstract international tax negotiations (like the UN Framework Convention) as requiring grounded, localized evidence from African systems, thereby positioning African voices as essential providers of legitimate expertise rather than just recipients of aid. The proposed solution—building an evidence ecosystem—points toward a necessary institutional restructuring where data access and analytical capacity are embedded within revenue administration structures, moving beyond ad-hoc partnership models to create lasting accountability mechanisms.
The missing piece in the framing is the scale of institutional inertia: how much political will is required to sustain long-term collaborative relationships between diverse entities like universities, tax administrations, and development partners, especially when immediate fiscal pressures exist? Furthermore, while the workshop identifies the need for collaboration, the tension between the administrative needs (secure data access) and the policy needs (public trust in implementation) remains a critical constraint. What specific governance mechanisms can be proposed to ensure that evidence-based reforms are implemented uniformly across diverse national contexts without creating new points of friction?