Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 September 2022
One of the key features of today's global economy is an ‘offshore world’ of financial structures, institutions and techniques designed to provide secrecy, asset protection and tax exemption. While its worldwide impact is very significant, Africa is affected to an unusual extent by the strategies of tax avoidance/evasion, outward financial flows (both legal and illegal) and corruption enabled by the offshore world. This is corroborated by a number of quantitative studies of capital flight as well as by influential investigations such as the Pandora Papers, Panama Papers and Luanda Leaks. The offshore world's limited presence in the study of contemporary African politics, political economy and international relations is therefore striking. The purpose of this exploratory paper is to highlight this gap, provide a preliminary analysis, and suggest that the politics of African insertion in the global offshore economy merits more attention from scholars of African politics.
Ricardo Soares de Oliveira is Professor of the International Politics of Africa at the Department of Politics and International Relations and Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on African Governance at the University of Oxford. Ricardo is thankful to the following for conversations and comments about earlier drafts of this paper: Wale Adebanwi, Christopher Clapham, Corentin Cohen, Stefan Dercon, Rebecca Engebretsen, Will Fitzgibbon, Emily Jones, Daniel Large, Peter Lewis, Nicolas Lippolis, Nelson Oppong, Ronen Palan, Didier Péclard, Anne Pitcher, Nicholas Shaxson, Jonny Steinberg, Ian Taylor, Miles Tendi, Olivier Vallée, Harry Verhoeven, Michael Watts and Toni Weis. He also thanks Alex Cooley, John Heathershaw, David Lewis, Tom Mayne, Casey Michel, Tena Prelec and Jason Sharman of the ACE Global Integrity project on money laundering and reputation laundering (2019–21). The Oxford Martin School staff has been enormously supportive since the start of the Programme on African Governance in 2017.