The OECD, Kenya, Italy and Germany launched the pilot Africa Academy for Tax and Financial Crime Investigation at the G20 Africa Partnership conference on 13 June 2017 in Berlin, Germany. Representatives of the four partners signed a Declaration of Intent to launch this academy, which seeks to strengthen the capacity of tax and financial crime investigators in tackling illicit financial flows. The sums lost to these flows, including tax evasion, money laundering, bribery and corruption are vast. In Africa alone, the 2015 Mbeki report estimates the losses in excess of 50 billion US dollars per year due to illicit financial flows. Illicit financial flows all thrive in a climate of secrecy, inadequate legal frameworks, lax regulation, poor enforcement, and weak inter-agency co-operation. Technology and an increasingly borderless world has also facilitated globalised financial crime, creating further challenges for those charged with investigating and prosecuting such crimes.
This initiative, supported by the G7 Bari Declaration (May 2017), aims to provide demand-driven training addressing the specific needs of African countries and building on Africa-wide experiences and best practices in tackling illicit financial flows.
The Africa Academy programmes include broad based courses on conducting and managing financial investigations, as well as specialised courses on topics including asset recovery, anti-money laundering, cash economy and VAT/GST fraud. More detailed information on upcoming Academy programmes is available below.
The Africa Academy is housed at the Kenya School of Monetary Studies (KSMS) in Nairobi, Kenya, part of the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA).