Symposium Posts

It has been 25 years since Sen’s seminal book “Development as Freedom” was published. A lot has changed since then, also in terms of how we tend to perceive the relationship between migration and development. For one, and to paraphrase Sen, migrants have begun to be perceived as “responsible persons” who “chose to act one way rather than other”. To migrate, or to stay. This reasoning is reflected in the recent work of, among others, Hein de Haas (2021) and Kerilyn Schewel (2020), who perceive migration – or lack thereof – as a result of people’s aspirations both in terms of their right to move (de Haas) and to stay (Schewel). Importantly, as argued by the latter, a systematic neglect of the causes and consequences of immobility – i.e. of people’s staying preferences – obscures any efforts to understand why, when, and how people migrate. By developing the aspirations-capabilities frameworks to explore the determinants of (im)mobility, de Haas and Schewel have contributed a great deal to altering the status quo in migration research, which has often focused on the more easily quantifiable, economic factors underlying migration decision-making. Importantly, unlike most mainstream theories of migration, the aspirations-capabilities framework becomes even more relevant when acknowledging the highly gendered nature of migration.

The symposium brings together four contributions by four distinguished authors. The contributions articulate both the potential and pitfalls of the aspirations/capabilities model of the nexus and highlight particularities when the framing is applied together with other layers (gender, climate crisis, refugees). Two of the contributions discuss their topic using the term “migration” while others look into the issue in the context of “refugees.” Notwithstanding the importance of the distinction between “migrants” and “refugees” in current global frameworks, the purpose here is to stimulate debate that goes beyond this fluid dichotomy. In popular parlance, the term “refugees” is used to connote “migrants” or “non-citizens” in general.

In many African countries, the protection and promotion of human rights is enshrined in national laws including domestic constitutions, policies, and guidelines. Many African countries are signatories to a plethora of conventions on human rights including the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights. However, in several African countries, ordinarily, socio-economic rights are not enforceable because socio-economic rights are not explicitly provided in many national constitutions. Furthermore, right to research as an evolutive and burgeoning framework in the African copyright system adds to this mix. Scholars including Okorie have advocated for the development of the right to research as a complete or explicit defence to copyright infractions or as user rights. However, the development of an explicit right to research in the African copyright context is afflicted with a plethora of obstacles. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic has further restricted access to information and academic materials especially in digital formats and furthermore, many African libraries and institutions are ill-equipped to perform their role of enabling access to information. Hence, this recent book – The Right to Research in Africa: Exploring the Copyright and Human Rights Interface by Desmond Oriakhogba is an important and innovative addition to this debate. Oriakhogba argues for a reconceptualization of the African copyright system from explicit human rights law perspectives as means of localising the right to research in the African context.

Globalisation and digitalisation of the economy has radicalised tax administration and commerce in Africa. While there is still significant room for growth, there has been a paradigm shift in Africa’s development policy landscape over the past three decades. Economic liberalisation measures aimed at opening up the continent to global market forces and attracting foreign direct investment have significantly replaced state intervention and public ownership in most African countries.1 There is a race amongst governments in the continent to optimise and harness the vast tax potential of both the digital economy and the emerging digital finance market involving trading in cryptocurrencies, Non-Fungible Tokens (“NFTs”), and other digital assets. They aim to embrace the regulatory complexities of both the digital economy and the emerging digital finance market with a view to making their countries fit for the digital age and to building a future-ready economy that works for the advancement of their people. However, the rise of globalisation and digitalisation of the economy, including the economic liberalisation that followed, has (amongst other factors) allowed tax and commercially related Illicit Financial Flows (“IFFs”) to thrive in Africa. IFFs from Africa are said to have assumed crisis proportions in recent times.3 Global Financial Integrity (2010) reportedly estimates IFFs from Africa between 1970 and 2008 alone at more than U$1 trillion, an amount that dwarfs the combined inflows of developmental assistance and foreign direct investments into the continent over the same period.4 Nigeria is also reported to have led other resource-rich African economies with this enormous outflow, put at US$217.7 billion, or 30.5% of the total IFFs from Africa within the relevant period.5 Africa is currently estimated to be losing more than US$50 billion to US$86.63 billion annually in IFFs.6

South Africa was recently put on the Financial Action Task Force’s grey-list. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) – an authoritative quasi-regulatory global body - relegates countries to ‘grey-list’ status when they fail to live up to global anti-money laundering, anti-terrorism, and anti-proliferation financing standards. Following an evaluation and extensive engagements with the African country, the FATF decided that a series of 8 strategic deficiencies needed to be addressed by South Africa before the end of 2025. It therefore placed South Africa under ‘increased monitoring’, a listing informally known as grey-listing. The FATF was created in 1989 to oversee the development and implementation of global anti-money laundering law. Through a series of developments – including the September 11, 2001 terrorism strikes in the United States – the FAFT’s mandate expanded to capture terrorist finance and proliferation financing. Drawn from the content of a series of international instruments attentive to the relationship between money and crime, the FATF compiled a set of 40 recommendations known as the global anti-money laundering, anti-terrorist finance, and anti-proliferation financing standards. The recommendations comprise matters such as specific money-laundering offences and confiscation regimes as well as measures designed to promote financial transparency (for instance, financial reporting requirements and beneficial ownership registries) and to facilitate international cooperation.

The International Asset Recovery Mechanism as it currently operates is highly unfair and disadvantageous to developing African countries. It is a system frost with power game, colonial vestige, and the undermining of the African sustainable development agenda. Indeed, African countries persistently suffer from the detrimental impact of outward illicit financial flows (IFFs), stemming from complex and multifaceted criminal and commercial activities. Latest IFFs estimates from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and African Development Bank (AfDB) reveal an ugly illicit financial flight that continues to deprive the continent of huge domestic resources and economic prosperity.

The relationship between IFFs and corrupt conduct of various stripes is, perhaps, intuitive. Bribery and embezzlement; money laundering; concealment of taxable business profits; even obstruction of justice around enforcement. All of these are tools in the apron of those who would facilitate and profit from IFFs, whether their misappropriated millions are enjoyed at home or, as is increasingly the case, sheltered and laundered abroad. It has been estimated that the amount of money lost to developing states via IFFs outstrips the amount received in foreign aid by a factor of ten. As the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime tells us, corruption is particularly corrosive because it undermines the proper functioning of governmental entities and institutions, discourages foreign direct investment and perverts the rule of law.

In recent times, developing countries are faced with a challenging task of balancing their commitment under various international instruments such as the Paris Agreement to achieve a Just Energy Transition and their pertinent need for industr1ialization and development. At the center of this contention is the knowledge that resources are scarce and must be allocated judiciously towards desired goals. The existing scarce resources are further plundered through illicit financial flows because of ineffective systems in developing countries. This paper examines the idea of a Just Transition through the lens of developing countries like African countries whose contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions have been minimal. The paper highlights access to finance as a key component of an expedient Just Transition and highlights illicit financial flow as a threat to the realization of the Just Energy Transition among other pre-existing structural challenges. This paper calls on developing countries to tighten their ship in retaining capital and limiting the illicit exportation capital towards realizing the Just Energy Transition.

Over the past few decades, we have seen an emerging form of neoliberal discourses on Africa that focus on emergence, as the continent has moved from being framed as the world’s “problem case” to the exciting new frontier of “Africa Rising". This has pushed neoliberal capitalists to see Africa as a continent of the future that is about to achieve transformations and socio-economic progress if it follows the orthodox advice of opening its market and accepting negative integration into the world economy. However, fuelled heavily by GDP growth rates, the “rising” narrative has been adept at obscuring a reality of widening wealth inequality and persistent poverty among the majority sections of the continent’s population even while witnessing the emergence of mega shopping malls and cell phones in almost every hand. Additionally, the myth of an Africa that achieves growth has overshadowed the quality of this growth as it does not lead to an improvement in the living conditions of Africans but instead breeds illicit financial flows (IFFs).

Climate finance is critical in addressing climate change because of the large-scale investments required for the climate transition. Climate finance refers to local, national or transnational financing – drawn from public, private and alternative sources of financing that seek to support mitigation and adaptation actions that will address climate change. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement call for financial assistance from Parties with more financial resources to those that are less endowed and more vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. Despite the gathering momentum when it comes to climate finance, developed nations have so far failed to meet their long-standing climate pledges. Developed countries fall significantly short of their commitment to contribute $100 billion annually to support climate actions in developing nations. There remains a substantial financial gap in climate finance in Africa, yet climate disasters cost between 5 and 15% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) each year. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the implementation of African Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) requires nearly $3 trillion, including about $2.5 trillion between 2020 and 2030. The need to fast-track climate finance is urgent and undeniable. However, Parties should also take into account the question of financial integrity in the climate transition. Transparency International defines financial integrity as “a financial system that operates in a clean, transparent and accountable way”. Tax transparency, fiscal transparency, procurement and contract transparency, and beneficial ownership transparency are prerequisites to financial integrity.