Turning Lofty Commitments On Illicit Financial Flows Into Hard Results

Ten years after the African Union (AU) adopted the Mbeki Panel’s landmark blueprint on illicit financial flows (IFFs), a new stock-take asks the blunt question: what has actually changed? The 2025 report, “Successes and Challenges of Implementing the Recommendations of the African Union High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows,” launched on August 27, 2025, offers a mixed verdict. It confirms real institutional headway—more Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs), nascent beneficial ownership databases, transfer-pricing units, and corporate registries—but also exposes stubborn gaps: weak inter-agency cooperation, slow law enforcement, patchy transparency in extractives, and fragile asset-recovery regimes. In short, the architecture is in place; implementation still lags.

The scale of the stakes remains staggering. The original Mbeki Panel estimated at least USD 50 billion illicitly leaves the continent each year—roughly the same magnitude as annual aid at the time. UNCTAD later put the figure at USD 89 billion for 2020 alone. In extractives, the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) recently warned that about USD 40 billion is siphoned from the sector annually. Behind these headline losses are human consequences: fewer classrooms and clinics, under-funded infrastructure, and a persistent squeeze on domestic resource mobilization. The report also highlights coordination politics. According to independent reporting, a consortium set up to stem IFFs has been hobbled by overlapping mandates, turf wars among institutions mandated with combating the malaise, and tensions between donors—the very challenges the Mbeki recommendations were intended to avert.

There are a host of initiatives that African nations can and must take both individually and collectively to squarely address the report’s diagnosis. First, make beneficial ownership (BO) transparency real, usable and regional. The report points to progress in creating BO databases, but also the Achilles’ heel: data quality, verification, and access. Africa should move from scattered registries to interoperable, query-ready platforms that permit competent authorities timely access and enable cross-border checks. As such it is vital build on the regional approach AU’s tax and IFF sub-committee is already contemplating by adopting, among others, common data standards and credible sanctions for non-filing or false filing.

As one of the activities most affected by IFFs, the due diligence on the extractives—where trade mis-invoicing and opaque contract terms remain primary channels of outflows— ought to garner top priority. Governments should mandate model mining and petroleum contracts, public disclosure of all extractive agreements, and independent valuation of high-risk exports (notably gold). In this regard they should consider tackling abusive related-party pricing in mineral value chains. The ECA’s USD 40 billion extractives loss estimate is a reminder that every percentage gain in compliance is a fillip to fiscal revenues.

A further area requiring action is the operationalization of the Common African Position on Asset Recovery (CAPAR), adopted in 2020, so stolen assets actually return and serve citizens. The initiative lays out four practical pillars: identify assets, recover and return them, manage them transparently, and strengthen cooperation. Countries that have not passed CAPAR-aligned laws are expected to enact legislation that permit non-conviction-based forfeiture in appropriate cases, mandate beneficial-use agreements for returned assets, and protect whistleblowers. The AU Advisory Board against Corruption can help by publishing country scorecards on CAPAR implementation and spotlighting model repatriation agreements that institutionalize transparency and community oversight.

Intra-continental information exchange and destination-country accountability constitute another intervention point. Illicit flows are not purely a supply-side problem. Africa needs predictable pipelines for beneficial ownership, banking and tax information exchange, and it needs destination jurisdictions—from European financial centers to Middle East gold hubs—to meet it halfway. The 2025 report’s call for stronger continental partnerships should translate into regional BO portals, automatic exchange of customs and trade data, and AU-level diplomacy that presses partners to open registers, end anonymous corporate vehicles, and expedite asset-return timelines. Where cooperation lags, the AU should consider reciprocity tools, including procurement exclusions to public listings of uncooperative jurisdictions.

These fixes will not matter without political stamina. The report’s warning that Africa is “losing the fight” against illicit funds underscores the urgency: institutional forms exist; outcomes lag. That is not a reason to retreat; it is a reason to redesign incentives. A decade after the Mbeki Panel jolted the continent awake, the task is not to invent new agendas but to finish the one Africa already has on its plate—build clean, searchable ownership data; police the extractives chokepoints; turn CAPAR from principle into practice; and insist that destination countries shoulder their half of the bargain. Africa does not lack for blueprints. It needs leaders who display a genuine concern for the welfare of their citizens and battle the IFF scourge that is bleeding the continent dry.