Bilateral aid to Africa fell by nearly a quarter in 2025, the largest annual decline in the history of official development assistance. Meanwhile, sovereign debt interest payments now consume on average 27% of government revenues across the continent, up from 19% in 2019.
The pressure to fund development from within has never been greater. But meeting it requires African governments to understand their own economies with precision: which tax policies work, which incentives serve their purpose, how fiscal decisions distribute their consequences.
Administrative tax data, the anonymised filings, returns and transaction records generated through the tax system that African revenue authorities already hold, is one of the most powerful tools for answering those questions. South Africa, Uganda and Zambia have built the means to use it, and what they are finding is shaping how they govern.
Each has established a secure research data lab where researchers work with anonymised tax records under strict confidentiality protocols. All three were developed with support from the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER). It provides technical expertise and facilitates knowledge-sharing across countries, while ensuring that the data, the research agenda and the findings are retained by the institutions that use them.
