African tax agencies, helped by accountants and international bodies, are strengthening their domestic revenue collection, as overseas development assistance declines and governments need to fill the resulting finance gap.
Aid income to Africa fell by 23.3% in 2025, according to an OECD report in June this year, its largest drop ever, following an 8.5% year-on-year reduction in 2024, and is projected to decrease by 6.9% in 2026.
‘Accountants can contribute to stronger public finances and sustainable long-term economic development’
While many wealthier countries slashed aid in 2025, such as Germany’s 17.4% cut, the US’s reduction has been particularly stark – down 56.9% in 2025 to US$29bn. A June OECD policy brief warned that bilateral aid to sub-Saharan Africa may fall 11.6% in 2026.
Aid down, revenue up
But the OECD also projects that African countries are performing better at revenue collection. Another June 2026 OECD report – Tax Transparency in Africa 2026: Africa Initiative Progress Report – claimed that African countries in 2025 identified €417m in additional tax revenue through exchange of information and related voluntary disclosure programmes. The report also highlighted opportunities to collect yet more taxes, charge more interest and levy penalties.
International bodies such as the African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF) have been helping, too. ATAF-supported audit interventions last year generated US$907.8m in tax assessments in member countries, of which US$685.8m was collected.
AB spoke to accountants in Mauritius, South Africa and Uganda to hear their views on current tax-raising efforts.
‘For Mauritius, the objective should be to strengthen domestic revenue mobilisation without compromising the country’s competitiveness as a place to invest and do business,’ says Désiré Lan, country managing partner at KPMG Mauritius. ‘This requires a tax system that is fair, predictable and efficiently administered.’
Balancing act
Lan notes that recent Mauritian reforms illustrate the balancing act between competitiveness and public revenue generation, including changes to personal and corporate taxation and the implementation of the OECD Pillar Two framework. The Indian Ocean archipelago has amended personal tax, introduced a corporate climate responsibility levy and brought in a top-up tax targeting a minimum Pillar Two 15% take from multinationals earning at least €750m.
Such domestic revenue mobilisation depends on trust, says Lan – and that requires expert tax advisers. ‘Governments need reliable data and effective administration, businesses need certainty and consistency, and taxpayers need confidence that the system is fair,’ she says.
‘Accountants can help bridge these objectives and contribute to stronger public finances and sustainable long-term economic development.’
Professional opportunities
Roomesh Ramchurn, FCCA, a Mauritius tax partner at Forvis Mazars, underlines the importance of trust but also the opportunities for accountants in this new era. ‘Lasting improvements in revenue collection cannot come from enforcement alone. They must be based on trust,’ he says, adding that accountants’ ‘training, ethical duties and professional judgment help them find errors early, question overly aggressive tax positions, explain tax obligations and make compliance part of normal business practice rather than a last-minute task’.
Indeed, says Ramchurn, the Mauritian reforms also create new opportunities for accountants. They can help businesses assess the effect of Pillar Two, identify which entities are covered, model effective tax rates, calculate qualified domestic minimum top-up tax (QDMTT), find missing data, review readiness, improve tax controls and assign filing responsibilities.
‘The work now is keeping clients’ records clean, dealing with verifications, and giving proper advice’
‘For the Mauritian QDMTT, this includes checking whether a group meets the €750m threshold, identifying covered and excluded entities, appointing a designated company resident in Mauritius, matching local reporting with the financial year of the ultimate parent entity, and managing notification, filing and payment deadlines,’ Ramchurn adds.
Political pushback
Politics can have an influence on revenue collection – as illustrated by South Africa, where government debt is projected at 78.9% of GDP in 2026, according to state figures. The government planned in 2025 to raise VAT from 15% to 15.5%, and to 16% in 2026, but the policy was scrapped due to political pushback and the focus has changed to improving tax collection.
‘The South Africa Revenue Service [SARS] is sitting on a ZAR646bn [USD39.6bn] debt book, over ZAR500bn [US$30.6bn] of it not even in dispute. That’s the low-hanging fruit,’ says Cobus Swart, director of accounting firm Centacc, in Pretoria. ‘So, the ZAR20bn [US$41.2bn] in tax increases planned for this year were scrapped, and SARS got more money and 1,500 extra debt collectors instead.’
To bolster tax collection, ‘SARS is going heavily digital,’ he says. ‘About six million people were auto-assessed this year, they’re building a digital identity for every taxpayer and they’re using AI to pick out who to look at.’
SARS is also introducing e-invoicing to help overhaul VAT collection by 2030, and accountants, says Swart, are key to bolstering tax collection: ‘We’re SARS’s biggest ally, bringing small businesses, trusts and informal traders into the system and keeping them compliant. Voluntary compliance is a lot cheaper than chasing people,’ says Swart: ‘The work now is keeping clients’ records clean, dealing with verifications, and giving proper advice.’
Digitisation focus
Pushing ahead with tax digitisation is a priority in Uganda, too, with the aim of widening the tax base and boosting revenue, strengthening compliance and reducing reliance on a relatively narrow pool of taxpayers.
Nsonobe Lauben, finance officer at The Hunger Project-Uganda, notes that the government’s Electronic Fiscal Receipting and Invoicing Solution is widening integration with the formal tax system. Businesses that are VAT-registered or within certain sectors (whether VAT-registered or not), such as construction, real estate and manufacturing, must use electronic invoicing and receipting through a system run by the Uganda Revenue Authority.
‘Accountants need to embrace AI and technology so they can solve their clients’ problems faster’
‘Digitisation will make it increasingly difficult for businesses to operate outside the tax system because transactions are becoming more visible,’ says Nsonobe. ‘Previously, accountants spent considerable time preparing and filing returns for clients. This was hard-copy paperwork. With electronic invoicing, more of that work is becoming automated.
‘Accountants need to embrace AI and technology so they can solve their clients’ problems faster.’
As with South Africa, accountant Nduhuura Paul Twinomugisha, managing director of Kampala-based Unique Management Associates, argues that broadening the tax base in practical terms may free the government from raising tax rates, with formalisation, simpler rules and stronger tech usage enabling Uganda to collect more tax from existing economic activity.
He says: ‘The profession is likely to move from retrospective reporting towards continuous assurance.’
