From 29 September to 3 October 2025, the Swedish Tax Authority hosted the second regional workshop under the International Capability Building Programme (ICBP) to combat illicit financial flows (IFFs) in collaboration with CABRI. Teams from Kenya, Liberia, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, and Zambia came together to share progress, pressure-test learning, and plan next steps in their PDIA (Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation) reform journeys. 

The workshop deepened peer learning as teams move from analysis to action across their home institutions. Across countries, teams are applying PDIA to priority IFF challenges in tax administration and public financial management. These challenges focus on key areas such as improving digital-economy tax compliance (targeting e-commerce anonymity, diverse platform models, and monitoring gaps), closing the persistent shortfall between expected and actual withholding on cross-border services, tightening detection of IFFs in the mining sector to stem revenue leakage, and strengthening data governance and inter-agency coordination and the reduction of fragmented information exchange across regulators which limits the ability to prevent, detect, and disrupt IFF networks. 

The second regional workshop centred on sharing emerging insights and lessons after several months of problem diagnosis, driven by evidence gathering from data and the perspectives of the actors that count. This has offered the teams insight into the real drivers of their IFF challenges so that the solutions that emerge speak to actual country realities. The gathering enabled cross-team feedback on both the technical and non-technical levers of their reforms.

Why this work matters

IFFs drain scarce public resources and weaken states’ ability to fund essential services. Through the ICBP, CABRI and the Swedish Tax Agency seek to build capability for problem-solving inside tax administrations, finance ministries, and relevant institutions rather than relying on one-off technical fixes. It is clear, that curbing IFFs will require tight collaboration across ecosystem actors to align objectives, share information, and coordinate responses. Without this joint work, and strong political will, even strong technical measures will have limited impact. This principle is advanced through the cross-functional nature of country reform teams and in the way they carry key stakeholders through the problem-solving process.

Following this workshop, country teams will continue their action-learning cycles, supported by coaching and peer exchange as they co-create solutions that meaningfully address the drivers of IFFs in their respective countries.