Nataliya Mykhalchenko - search results

Nataliya Mykhalchenko reviews a book that describes the devastating impact of tax havens and capital flight for Africa. The book details the intricate relationship between capital flight, global corporations, bank secrecy and the elites, i.e. the power-accumulation nexus. As a proportion of total wealth, Africa is the most afflicted continent in the world. For example, elites on the continent hold approximately USD 500 billion in financial wealth offshore, roughly 30% of total financial wealth held by Africans.

In a blogpost jointly published with Tax Justice Network, Nataliya Mykhalchenko asks whether the emerging effort to curb both illicit financial flows and tax avoidance is a global fight and not just another global flight driven by certain powerful entities and interest groups trying to avoid paying tax. Given that the issue has universal significance and undermines the development of many countries in the Global South, more research (and campaigning) is needed in order to understand the nature of these initiatives and the forces behind them.

The adoption of technologies in the Nigerian banking sector is helping the ‘’unbanked’’ and ‘’underbanked’’ to enter online banking users. Yet, as Nataliya Mykhalchenko writes, electronic fraud related to e-payments, online banking and card use, for example, is rising across the country.

In her second contribution Nataliya Mykhalchenko asks what is the result of anti-fraud measures in Africa and if the failure of initiatives to tackle fraud may be because they fail to challenge the economic system that creates conditions for its very existence.

Nataliya Mykhalchenko discusses some of the challenges and findings of working on the political economy of anti-fraud measures in Africa.

Jörg Wiegratz asks why there is such silence in much of African Studies on capitalism. He wonders why capitalism does not feature more prominently in titles of major Western conferences on Africa, and articles of main African Studies journals. In this blogpost he asks why does this analytical lacuna exist? Wiegratz calls for a discussion and explanation of this state of affairs. On the central question of capitalism, the African Studies community, he argues, in Western Europe, and across the Global North, is largely inactive and silent? When it comes to an explicit, focused and sustained collective exploration, about the many, multifaceted features of contemporary capitalism on the continent, and about the characteristics of African society as a capitalist society, there is a gaping silence.

Dave Johnson argues that instances of fraud have increased since the liberalisation of the economies examined in his research. However the wider social harm of consuming and using fraudulent goods falls unevenly on the poor yet these consequences seems low on the official anti-fraud agenda.