Around 30% of sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP disappears to offshore tax havens says Ghanaian website, Public Agenda, in an article about a new African campaign for tax justice in Africa that was proposed at the WSF in Mali and will launch at the WSF in Nairobi in 2007.

Here’s the beef of the argument:
Astonishingly, international organisations including the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund have not pursued international action to stem the haemmoraging of Africa’s wealth. Instead, they have encouraged developing African nations to drop business and trade taxes further, in a desperate bid to encourage investment from multinational corporations accustomed to channeling their wealth through tax havens. The result is that ordinary people shoulder more of the tax burden through sales taxes, while homegrown national businesses cannot compete with giant international corporations which can avoid tax through the international movement of capital and assets.

I hope they discuss what African government’s should do with those taxes too.