Twenty-two tax and finance professionals mostly from countries across Africa successfully completed the last module for the Research on Tax and Development course of the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD), based at IDS, in Accra earlier this month.
The course, which has been delivered by ICTD for nearly ten years, equips participants with a strong understanding of the current tax and development landscape, and teaches them basic research methodologies, supporting them to develop their own research projects. The final module, always in-person, focused on how to write and disseminate research outputs such as blogs, academic papers, and policy briefings.
IDS Research Fellow, Max Gallien, who co-leads Teaching and Learning at ICTD, said “we teach most of the course online, to make it more flexible and accessible to students, most of whom are busy professionals working in the finance, legal and tax sector. But concluding with a face-to-face event is invariably an enriching experience for both students and training. For me, meeting the students is always inspiring and reconnects me to our overall ambition of improving tax systems in a way that contributes to greater equality, better governance and inclusive growth.”
Stephanie Alkoussa, Communications Officer at ICTD who delivered sessions on Research Communications said, “The value of these in-person sessions transcends the learning material. Students have finally the opportunity to network and connect face- to-face instead of behind a screen, to share knowledge, ideas and human connections. Similarly, we also get to meet them for the first time and learn from them and their experiences.”
This year’s cohort of participants from Benin, Cameroon, Colombia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia included researchers, accountants, economists, lawyers, civil servants, and experts in public finance.
When asked why he applied to the course, Samuel Namwanja Musoke, an economist and Head of the Financial Analysis Unit at the Central Bank of Uganda, underscored his interest in gaining the appropriate tools and skills to leverage the plethora of available data. “Through the course, I have managed to understand how to initiate ideas and then transform them into action,” he said, commanding the resources and high-level expertise presented through the mentorship programme. “I started the course with an idea on how taxes would impact digital payments. But this thought has now been transformed into a concept and progressively it is becoming a working paper,” he added.
For her part, Afshin Nazir, Policy and Advocacy Officer at the African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD) in Kenya, wanted to sharpen her research skills and broaden her tax knowledge. “The course provided me with a holistic picture of the research process, by looking at every stage from the initial proposal to the dissemination and impact. Researchers tend to focus only on the methodology, interpretation and output but the course introduced us to other important pillars including financing, monitoring and evaluation,” she stressed.
To wrap the module, students took centre stage to present their respective project proposals and ideas and receive feedback from their peers and ICTD Fellows. They are expected to finalise their research proposals and submit them for grading in December. Students are then encouraged to use the proposals to apply for research funding or further support from ICTD. Alternatively, they can publish an ICTD blog addressing an important and underdeveloped area of tax research.
These thoughts were echoed by Bernard Busuulwa who participated in the 2022/2023 course. “[Taking part in this course] was a big professional eye opener despite the stress of heavy reading alongside completing endless work deadlines. It really changed my perspectives on tax policy formulation, the linkages between tax collection and social mindsets and the value of data analysis in tax collection planning exercises,” he stated. He highly appraised his mentor who showcased an accommodative attitude and shared her knowledge on informal sector taxation and digital taxation. “Her content practically lives in my mind whenever I write about local traders’ grievances towards the Uganda Revenue Authority and its people,” he noted.
One course alumna, Olivia Okello, has in fact recently published a Working Paper on the taxation of fisheries in Kenya written with ICTD Research Fellow Giovanni Occhiali.
Event on tax policy and politics at the University of Ghana
While in Accra, ICTD co-organised with the Centre for Social Policy Studies (CSPS) and the Gender Equitable and Transformative Social Policy for a Post-Covid Africa (GETSPA) project at the University of Ghana, a hybrid panel discussion showcasing the connection between taxation and wider political and social issues in Africa.
ICTD Research Fellows Jalia Kangave, Max Gallien, and LoGRI’s Colette Nyirakamana discussed the relationship between taxes and trust in the state, elections and public mobilisation, informality and gendered social relations. (LoGRI or the Local Government Revenue Initiative is a programme of ICTD)
The event forms part of a wider partnership linking ICTD to the University of Ghana which concentrates on the Centre’s research on taxing informal economies.
