 So let me introduce Dr. Hanan Maasi to you. So I'm very delighted to introduce her to our first keynote lecture to speak on Classical Finance in Africa. Dr. Maasi joins us virtually from the Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi, which is attending currently. Dr. Maasi is the Deputy Secretary and Chief Economist of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, ECA, in short. Dr. Maasi has a wealth of cross-country experience and vast expertise in leading top-quality policy and development work and building strong partnerships working in international organizations and the private sector. She has published in a wide range of economic and development issues and led a number of major flagship publications. Prior to joining ECA, Dr. Maasi was the Director of the Micropromic Policy and Research Department at the African Development Bank between 2018 and 2021, where she provided thought leadership on economic issues and oversaw the production of rigorous analytical work that's trained in the bank's policy dialogue and operations across its member countries. And before that, she previously worked as associate director and lead economist with the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean region at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, EBRD, in short, in London between 2012 and 2018. In that role, she established and headed economic analysis and policy advisory services for the new region of operation and continuations and del country strategies. Prior to that, Dr. Maasi worked at the International Monetary Fund between 2003 and 2012 in various capacities across different departments, including fiscal affairs, Middle Eastern Central Asia, European and monetary capital markets, where she led and contributed to work on accentuate assessments, fiscal vulnerability, financial, and macro-prudential policies. I'm delighted to welcome Dr. Anand Maasi to provide the first keynote lecture. And she's going to join us virtually. Dr. Maasi, over to you. Good morning. And thank you very much for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be with you today. And apologies for not being able to be with you in Oslo because I'm participating in Africa Climate Summit. And I think the topic that we're discussing today fits very well with the number of discussions that we've been having here and a number of African high-level summits and conferences. I will focus today on issues of how to scale up domestic resource mobilization and rethinking approaches to this in Africa. Tax revenue in Africa has remained largely below beers since 2000. And you can see in the charts how Africa resource mobilization have compared relative to South Africa, to Latin America. And basically, it has been rather stagnant since early 2000s. And African tax revenue even compared to beers by income level, not just by regions, have shown limited progress. And really, among the regions, if we look at among the grouping by income countries, we see that if we look at it rebased by 2000, it's the only region where actually it has experienced significant decline compared to 2000 tax revenue levels. Meanwhile, I think what is complicating the situation is while we've been seeing a kind of erosion and decline in the domestic revenue mobilization, at the same time, the global financing scene is actually making the situation even more difficult for meeting development needs for Africa, because finance is getting scarier and more costly. We can see here, as you can see from the borrowing coast and the Africa spread, how it has been rising, and particularly with the number of global shocks that we have seen. So it even rose significantly during COVID and as a result of the war in Ukraine. And there has been already identified that there is an Africa premium for tabbing international capital markets. So usually Africa pays between 100 to 250 basis points higher relative to countries with similar macroeconomic fundamentals. So that even makes it harder for African countries, even with those that have been doing well in terms of macroeconomic fundamentals to get financing at affordable scale. But this is also going to become even more complicated because we are moving into a new financing financial markets norm. We're not going to see this historically low interest rate that we have witnessed over the last decade and a half. We are now seeing much higher interest rates. And on top of that, if we combine that with the type of spreads that Africa faces and the risk premium, Africa risk premium that we witness, this will become even more difficult for countries to either roll over their debt or to finance additional ones. And this is really the financing gap therefore poses a serious challenge going forward. It's driven by the high primary deficit that is also expected to persist. And with the fact that we have currently historically high levels of debt and with the concessional financing trends that we have been seeing basically declining over the last two decades and added to this what we have just shown in terms of external financing becoming more costly and more scarce. This means that there is no option but really to focus on enhancing and strengthening domestic resource mobilization to actually ensure that there is sufficient resources to finance development, SDG investments, and client action. If we also kind of delve down into composition of the revenues and the trends, we see that the revenues from sales tax and direct taxes have been rather steadily declining. And also for taxes on international trade as well, this has been declining and it's likely to even decline further with the number of agreements that we've seen happening, including countries joining the Brexit, but also the African continental free trade agreement and removal of many of this reduction in these trade taxes across African countries. So that means that really African need to focus on enhancing domestic resource mobilization and taxation to be able to deliver on the huge needs going forward. In this chart, actually, what I tried to do is to look at dividing African countries according to income level and to see how the taxation relative to economic development level. So as we can see that there is tax mobilization tend to increase with the level of development, which actually helps in expanding tax base. And also there is a notable difference in the average of tax mobilization rate by the level of development as we can see in the chart. But there is also a large even dispersion, especially for low income countries in terms of revenue utilization. And really that has to do with the weak tax administrations of optimal tax structures and overall for in Africa the prevalence of informality in the economy, which basically affects the significantly affect the tax base. A very important issue that I think we have not including in research given sufficient emphasis to is really the link between taxation and inequality and using use of taxation to tackle issues of inequality. As we can see from the chart here, improved tax mobilization can actually be an important policy instrument in fighting high and persistent inequality in Africa. And even controlling for differences in per capita consumption levels, country fixed effects and time varying unobserved factors, higher tax as a ratio of GDP is associated with low genie coefficient in Africa. This really calls for more research at country and regional level to further study the issue and come up with specifics to how can we tackle this. Going to what we started with was the aim of scaling up domestic resource mobilization. So what could be done? I think there are a variety of avenues that need to be really looked into. And some of them I consider as low hanging fruit. And some would require rethinking of the way that domestic resource mobilizations are done. So let me start by some of which that I think I believe they are low hanging fruits. And this is the ineffective tax exemptions, which are actually prevalent in Africa. And the account for 6% to 7% of GDP resulting in significant revenue losses. Most of these exemptions are related to corporate income tax and value added tax. And they tend to be granted to multinational companies, large corporates, wealthy individuals, and are estimated to cost over $50 billion a year. Among those that I actually enjoy or particularly get tax exemptions are operators and mining sector. 48 African countries offer some form of tax incentive for mining sector. However, I think the tax exemptions when they are granted with no cross checks can lead to substantial forgun revenue. There has been a tendency historically in Africa to compete for attracting, particularly for direct investment, through tax incentives. And I think we really need to reconsider that because there has been a number of evidence about what matters for investor decisions. And in many of the surveys, in many of the studies, it's not really the tax incentives that are provided. There are a lot more important incentives and issues that investors would care about. For example, repatriation for an exchange availability and ability to repatriate, issues of availability of energy and the kind of reliable electricity supply, kind of like macroeconomic and policy certainty. So we need to really focus our efforts on what matters and avoid leakages that don't necessarily bring returns. And that's why I believe that when we have tax exemptions that are granted without proper oversight and evaluation of their impact, this can lead to significant leakages. And the lack of transparency also makes it difficult to assess their effectiveness. So it's essential that African countries need to evaluate the cost and benefits of these policies and ensure that they contribute to sustainable development. And perhaps reconsider, actually, whenever they have not been effective to eliminate them and focus on the key issues that they are trying to tackle. So if it's about attracting foreign direct investment, let's focus on what are the key and major obstacles that are holding back FDI. A other important areas that can also be a potential sources of increasing domestic resource mobilization actually includes, for example, illicit financial flows, which is an issue that has just been referred to earlier. There are a variety of estimates in terms of how much it costs. The Economic Commission for Africa estimates almost close to $90 billion a year, which is half of the SDG financing gap. So the SDG financing gap is estimated at $200 billion US dollars a year. The illicit financial flows are estimated to be on the cost half of that financing gap, each year. And that's equivalent to 3.7% of Africa's GDP. Also, there has been estimates by AFDP and others to estimate a loss of $1.2 trillion US dollars between 1980s and late 2000 due to illicit financial flows. And you can imagine, I mean, we look at this, we're talking far more than what we're getting in 8, a lot more than what it would cost to tackle our health financing gap or education financing gap. So these are massive resources. And in addition, also, we've estimated that due to base erosion and profit shifting, that cost Africa 1.8% of GDP a year, around $44 billion US dollars. So we can see that there are a number of things that can be done to actually tackle these issues. So for example, significant resources can be achieved by really looking into things like tax expenditures and tax benefits and exemptions that in some countries can amount to up to 15% of GDP. So previewing these type of tax benefits would be essential. But also, in addition to that, additional resources of up to 8.5% of GDP could be achieved by mitigating losses due to illicit financial flows and profit shifting. Also, African countries have other areas where which can be promising to look at. Let me say that these are the ones that are not, they are important, but they will not be easy. And these include issues, for example, like land and property taxation. A land and property taxation in Africa, revenues from them, is less than 1% of GDP, significantly lower than in other regions and averages around the world. And it's an area that is very important because it relates to issues of it can help in more progressive taxation and it can help also in financing social safety nets. We have even high-income and high-middle-income countries in Africa that have the highest inequality ratios. Do you think of the highest inequality in Africa is in South Africa, followed by Namibia? And yet, we don't have sufficient revenues that are coming from land and property taxation. So this is an area that would be very important to focus on going forward to help with having more progressive taxation. Of course, around the continent, there are a number of issues that hinder that from issues of insufficient registration records for land and property to capacity constraints in terms of valuation. But I think this is an area that will need to be developed and also has a potential of using technology, whether it's satellite imagery, whether special data that can actually help in enhancing the valuation in terms of also looking into comparing what is registered and reported relative to what is happening, looking at these lands and what it's being used for. So it would be really important to start to do this. Of course, there will be this is likely to also be an area where there is more politically sensitive, perhaps even have issues of vested interest. But I think this is the type of difficult conversation that has to be had to actually progress in terms of finding resources for dealing with the needs, development needs, but also dealing with the huge needs for improving social safety in Latin Africa, and particularly with the tsunami of global shocks that we have seen. We have seen, for example, that in East Asia, the implementation of substantial land taxation has led to declining land speculation. And we also have seen that, for example, in some African countries, how this has helped, for example, in a key driver of municipal revenue in Kigali is estimated around $60 million a year, over four times of the city's current revenue. So there is huge potential in that area. And there are a number of countries that are listed here that have tried to look into this. But the issue of building capacity in terms of valuation and registry enhancing the registration of land and property and enhancing compliance would be very important. Another area that is also would be important to consider is really utilizing technology and e-government, for example, e-government services and e-government filing for taxes would be important. There has been already work that has shown that it can help in enhancing revenue mobilization and reducing corruption. So utilizing this going forward would be important. And it can help also in terms of streamlining procedures and enhancing the tax administration capacity. Another, of course, issues would be issues of utilizing also other existing building on existing technologies, whether a big data AI to enhance practices, whether it's in valuation, for example. But also it can help with issues, for example, like cross-border movements and detecting evasion of taxation. So we need to bring up the capacity of the revenue departments and tax administration departments to really keep up with the advances in these areas and to use it as an opportunity to enhance compliance and detect evasion. Another area that perhaps before we move there, another area also that would be critical in terms of enhancing the potential for domestic resource mobilization is really tapping into this kind of enhancing the exchange with other countries to avoid, for example, some of the sources of the illicit financial flows, particularly in trade misinvoicing. So that would mean that given that today the conferences held in Norway, countries receiving countries would need to collaborate with African countries to make sure to reduce these kinds of misinvoicing and evasion. And I think cross-country collaboration will be key to enhance that. But also there is another opportunity that has kind of came recently from the global corporate minimum tax that has been agreed on and especially on large and digital companies. And I think number, for example, Egypt has started to working with partners to streamline its regulation with these changes to be able to achieve more revenues from companies, for example, like Amazon, Google, and so on. So I think we need to have more of harmonization of African countries' legislation to be able to reap the benefits of these global legislatory changes. Another area that I think would be useful to really utilize is behavioral sciences. And that can help in tax compliance, employing approaches to really enhance compliance. We have a huge literature on tackling compliance as nudging with our simplifying procedures, trying to change or tackle issues of social norms, creating economic gains, incentives, and rewards, and penalties, personalized messaging, using peer effects, trust building between government and taxpayers. All these things would really need to be looked at and used more and some just to African countries, credit some countries have been starting to do that. And here you have a number of examples, for example, an experiment that was conducted in partnership with the Latvian Revenue Agency, where informal economy loomed around 25% yielded revealing insights. So we have already not only in Africa, but in other regions, we've seen that and we've seen the impact. Also, for example, sending behaviorally informed messages for declaring omissions of tax declaration as a deliberate infraction resulted in almost 10% higher compliance, also social norms messages led to the most submissions of 45 days after the deadline by over 5% increase. So perception of public benefits from compliance separately also affect tax compliance. And there is a Norway study that reported increased compliance when the stated taxes are used for publicly financed services. And that takes me to a very important issue that I think one of the best ways to really enhance compliance is the communication and transparency on how the revenues from this collection is being used, meaning how this is affecting the normal life of citizens. What is this money going for? What percent of this is going, for example, towards schools or hospitals or building roads or enhancing public transport? So I think that we really need to be done a lot more and much better than what is currently is because then this gives a sense of ownership for taxpayers about their money and what this money is going for. They're more likely to pay when they see results on the ground than if they believe that they're not benefiting from these costs to them basically. I'd like to thank you and I'm happy to answer any questions. Over to you. Thank you very much for the keynote. We have actually 30 minutes or so for Q&A. And I hope you can hear me. Yes, I can. What I suggest is that we take three questions in a row and Dr. Mosey can answer three questions in a row. We're going to try and mix questions from the online audience and also from all of you here. First, let's start from all of you here in the audience. If you could put your hand up, make sure the microphone reaches you. We have colleagues with microphones here. So do not speak before you get the microphone. And so if you put your hand up, I can see you and I'll ask you to speak. So there's one there, I think, right? So let's just wait. One, two, and three there. So let's start with this three. And speak loudly so that Dr. Mosey can hear you. Yes, I hope you can hear me. My name is Christian von Haldenwang. I'm from the German Institute of Development and Sustainability. And I just wanted to emphasize the relevance of taking tax expenditures into account, as you did in your presentation. Five years ago, I think the same presentation would have not mentioned or only in a side note the key issue of tax expenditures, monies that are not collected by the governments in order to provide incentives for investments or fight poverty and so on. And you said that there are some low-hanging fruits. I think that beyond that it's highly relevant that the use of tax expenditures becomes more transparent. So reporting on tax expenditures and beyond that evaluating the use of tax expenditures is key. And we are doing this work with the Global Tax Expenditures Database and with the Addis Tax Initiative where we do workshops in Africa, Asia and so on. And we see a lot of goodwill on behalf of governments to engage in these kinds of reforms. But, and we also count with the support of UN ECA on this. And I would really encourage UN ECA to keep this work and to encourage governments to improve reporting and evaluation of tax expenditures. Thank you. Thank you very much. That was a very good question about the use of taxes, not just the mobilizing of taxes. And we'll come back to that so most of you can speak to that later on. So we had a question from that too. Hand up to the colleague and see you. Yep, and there's a question that happened. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. Very good presentation, Doc. And you really covered a lot. My question is just in terms of you highlighted strides and how taxing property and land can really help. Sorry, by the way, I'm Anotin Fembe from the Zambia Revenue Authority. Yeah, so my interest is in the taxation of land and property. You highlighted the challenges that are there in that field. So what is being done to help me to get and what efforts probably are there to help countries that could really benefit from this taxation on how they can go about with this? Thank you. Thank you. That's a very good question. Thank you for that. Good morning. This is Selim Rahman from Bangladesh. Excellent presentation. I think this is something what we are also from South Asia. We're also looking at this whole tax, low tax issues. Some of the very issues which you highlighted, very common to South Asian countries as well. My, I have two questions, very quick two questions. One is that you talked about the land tax, especially drawing the lessons from East Asia. But I have kind of concerns within African countries when land ownership in some, in many cases, are not properly defined. There are challenges. How do you really like to implement land tax in that context? And second question, you talked about high tax expenditure, tax exemptions, avoidance of tax payment and many of the African countries. And these are very common in other, many other developing countries as well. But the problem there is not just only the technical solution like where you implement or introduce many modern technologies, but the very inherent political economy dynamics within all these countries, especially the way, the nexus between the business and the state in terms of avoidance of taxes. How do you like to reflect on this particular issue? Thank you. Thank you. So Dr. Maasi, you had three question, battery four. Do you want to answer them first and review the next round of questions? Thank you. Sure, sure. Thank you for all the participants for the engaging questions and discussion. On the issue of reporting and transparency, I could not agree more with the first participants on the need to actually encourage that. I think that's also in a way the role of citizens to ask for that transparency. And to require it in terms of accountability from the government to ensure that this is actually these tax benefits when they are given, they are resulting or providing benefits for economic development. In some cases they could maybe perhaps create jobs, lead to knowledge transfer, but we need to be able to kind of know transparently what are, you know, when they are given, what is given and then to be able to check and have evaluation and monitoring of how useful it has been and recalibrate accordingly if it has not provided. You know, it has not delivered on what it's meant for to actually scale it back or eliminate it or perhaps even use a different policy tool to tackle the objective. So I completely agree. And I think this is an issue that the Economic Commission for Africa, we've been working on, I would be happy to collaborate further with others about. Then there was also an issue that was raised from the colleague in Zambiam regarding land taxation. I think when there is a interest in political well, you know, there can be a very specific steps in terms of how to go about implementing. Some of the things that need to be also considered beforehand is the official registries. How much of the actually the property and the land is captured in official registries because that will be, you know, the first tool that the government would use in terms of administration and compliance. So one would need to work on that perhaps before, you know, the implementation or introduction of such tax. And also there are a variety when we think of taxation, there is, you can think of it as kind of some sort of a form of wealth taxation in this sense. So you can, you know, have a progressive way depending on, you know, the type of property that caused the size of the land and so on. That becomes more progressive so that you're not taxing the very small and the low income individuals. But also you could also use it to enhance the economic efficiency. For example, there are agricultural land that are not being used for agriculture or there are in, you know, land that is supposed to be in industrial areas that have not been built. So you could use also something to incentivize the proper use of the land or the property and to actually tax kind of hoarding behavior. And I think there will be, if there is interest in this, I'm sure there will be not only at ECA but in number of development partners that would be happy to support Zambia if this is something that there is interest and willingness to proceed with. The colleague from Bangladesh raised a very important point which is issues of informal land ownership. And you're absolutely right that this is an issue that would be of concern because when you have informal land center which happens in a number of African countries where actually the land is being held under informal or, you know, customary 10-year systems, this can, you know, both a challenge in terms of effective tax land administration. And I think that's why I had mentioned earlier a very important step to actually introducing an implementing tax and land taxation is to ensure proper registries, perhaps work on enhancing that, formalizing these type of arrangements ahead of time. And also there is, you know, the tendency also there, I mean, if we look at it in more detail, there tends to be also an urban ruler divide. So, you know, in many times you find the more of the registered properties or lands in urban areas rather than in ruler areas. And you want to ensure that when you are also taxing that you are not, within taxing, for example, land, you're not also a kind of the balance or the weight of those taxation and how they fall in ruler areas. So these are some of the type of issues that policymakers will need to consider and really take into account in terms of how such measures can be implemented. And there is the, I was asked the kind of the challenging question about the relation between business and state. And I think that's why I said in my intervention that this is not an easy route. It's a politically sensitive one as in, you know, in African and all regions around the world, I'm sure also is the case in Bangladesh. And it requires kind of like, you know, the a lot of, you know, dialogues, a lot of, you know, conversations because it's part of a social contract. It's part of how the role of the state and what are the implications when, you know, these actions, basically the cost of non-action is perhaps the type of things that we need to do more of. It's not just, we have the cost of these, for example, not having these resources, but what does this translate to in terms of how many of the poor and vulnerable, you know, is this coasting, the, you know, for example, how many would be affected can be supported if these taxes are introduced. What are the trade-offs? Having these kinds of social and public conversations can only be, you know, the way to, pave the way to change and shift policies. Without them, it's, it will be very difficult to just, you know, proceed with no engagement, with no understanding of what are the costs and benefits of all these different policy instruments. Back to you. Thank you, Dr. Monsi. I think we can take three more questions. I already saw a hand up there, right? Yeah, that's one there. Online question, yeah? Okay, and then one more question. Let's take these three and we'll come back again to the others. So one here, and then online question, of course, an online audience, and then question from Rose at the back. Yeah, go ahead. Thank you so much. My name is Ali Nassanga from Uganda Revenue Authority. I have two questions. One is on the land. In Africa, specifically in Uganda, there are people who own land that has been passed on to them from their grandparents. It's family land for generations they've owned this land. And what they are doing on this land mainly is growing food as substantial agriculture to feed themselves. I kept thinking, yes, it may be a good idea to tax these people, but until we pushing the poor of the poorest because they didn't buy the land, they owned it from their grandparents and they grow food on it. They don't necessarily have any other source of income. So introducing a tax on these may push them into a stage of even losing the only thing they have. How, in your case study, in your experience, how has this been handled elsewhere? The second is about the tax exemptions. Now in Uganda, we have different institutions. We have the investment authority that is out getting people for foreign direct investment into the country. Then they get these exemptions. Then we have the minister of finance and then we have the URA. It is a good idea, yes, to have a proper monitoring and evaluation of these tax exemptions to see their benefit. In your experience, which agency, how would the monitoring and evaluation and reporting be handled? Should it be a role more in the minister of finance or from the tax authority? Thank you so much. Thank you. Then there's a question from the online audience so you can go there next. Thank you. This is a question from Ferdinand Philipsen who is following the session online. He asks, many development partners are hardly supporting improvement of resource mobilization. At the same time, in their own countries, other forces, including ministries of economies, et cetera, are stimulating their companies to invest in developing countries, requesting tax incentives. How can we reconcile this and align on country interest in development cooperation? Thank you. And then Rose, then you give that to back. And we'll come back again to the next set of questions. Thanks. Thanks very much for very, very good presentation. I have two questions. One, I like this aspect of tax compliance and using the behavior approach which you can convince the taxpayers on why they need to pay tax. And of course, that the tax is being used for provision of public service. But we have seen also the other side of it. How do you hold the government accountable? How do you use the behavioral approach also to ensure that government is actually using the monies that they are collecting to provide the services? Is there a good example where say for example, blockchain technology is being used by citizenly, actually to see to it that the government is also being held accountable in terms of how they're utilizing the funding. So that compliance is on both sides. I comply, I pay, you comply also and provide the services that are required. The second one is in terms of progressive tax. We keep on talking about having a progressive tax system. But you can imagine you're taxing a person income tax. So they pay say for example, 30%. And then when they go to the grocery store to purchase goods, they again pay VAT because they have to feed. If they go to do any financial transaction, they again pay tax on the same same income that they have. So at what point do we say that there is progressive or tax system is actually progressive? Thank you. Thank you. I think we have very nice questions there. Dr. Monsi, did you want to answer them? Thank you, great questions. Thank you very much. Perhaps let me start in reverse with the last question that was asked. In terms of progressive taxation. This is a very important issue but let me perhaps give an example of as a taxpayer when I lived outside of Africa where I was living, I lived in the UK, I lived in the US. There is a property tax that you get each year depending on the evaluation of the place that you're living in. And what you know is where these taxation, these taxes are financing. You know that these taxes finance the schools, the hospitals and the roads in this neighborhood. And there is a tendency basically that where you pay the higher taxes tend to be where the best schools are. And it creates more demand for these neighborhoods to actually have more citizens moving there or looking up for that area because you know that they are better funded, that they get better results and these are public schools. So these are the type of things that would make a difference or incentive for African citizens to be willing to do. They need to see what is this specific taxation is going to fund, how they are going to benefit. How does it make their neighborhood, their area more attractive, their life better for them and for their children. So that would be really important in considering how to do that. And I know that they, I mean, we've been talking about, okay, we are paying already, you know, income tax, financial tax, VET, but let me just give you like, you know, an example. I mean, we have, for example, I have mentioned earlier, you know, Namibia. Namibia is a country that, a middle income country, yet it has the second highest inequality in Africa. And you have, for example, the land is concentrated in the, you know, with those that have the wealthiest. And for the government, for example, when a shock like COVID or like the word in Ukraine hits them when they need to mobilize more resources for additional, you know, social safety nets. What are the type of things that we need to ensure? Where are the resources? I think you would need to think about, okay, how is this land is being utilized? Is it being utilized for the reason that, you know, it's stated, how is, how can perhaps this be, there'd be some sort of gradual taxation on it, and also how this funding will be used. So I think, yes, there are taxation, but there are also things that when you see the realities and the specifics of the country, you can define the appropriate solutions. And the question in terms of how do you make the government accountable, behavioral wise? I think it's a very interesting area because most of the literature so far has focused more on the consumers rather than like, you know, incentivizing policy makers. I think we need to do more on that. And I do like your idea of the blockchain to track, but I think part of keeping governments accountable is the responsibility of the citizens, of the public to demand, you know, that accountability, whether it's through, you know, parliaments of Congress and to ask for reporting on these issues to really, enforce that through different mechanisms. For example, I mean, you've talked that, I can't remember the last speaker, which country, but you talked about the issue of the tax exemptions having a number of government entities involved. So it's not concentrated in one entity. So it's important to have this even, you know, known and transparent. What are the kind of, you know, the checks and balances? What are the rules to give these tax exemptions? Who have the right to do it? How it has been utilized for each of these entities? How much of these tax exemptions have been awarded? Have been renewed? Have they been followed? And to make sure that public has access to that. In terms of who does the monitoring, I think this is really a kind of a national question that in some countries you have a kind of like independent entities like, for example, in Kenya, you have an independent entity that kind of looks at the tax expenditures and not just expenditures in general fiscal decisions and evaluate what has happened and it's independent from the government. But I think for each country, there can be like, you know, it can be decided within the country what would work best. The most important is in instilling that principle of accountability of regular evaluation and monitoring and transparency and sharing that. That would be very important. The colleague from Uganda asked a very important question regarding family-owned lands that basically are used for subsistence and how this can have actually almost a negative impact. Perhaps can be even, you know, regressive rather than progressive. That's why we had, when we were talking earlier, I talked about valuation. So when these valuations are done properly, it will also take into account, you know, the not only the value of the land, but also it can take into account in terms of the regions that this is, they are done the kind of the areas, you know, the poverty in different areas. So this is not just a one-size-fits-all. There need to be really kind of a very thorough process in terms of determining how to go about it. It's not, the idea is not just taxing like, you know, land regardless, but it's basically taxing to reflect the valuation they use and also the capacity of those that are actually to pay. So it's not intended, for example, to be, you know, for the subsistence farming land. It's more intended to be for the more, you know, expensive land or lands that are used, are not used for what they're supposed to be for, say agriculture used for something else or industrial areas, but they are not built. All these things can be a very important consideration to take into account. I, if you could please repeat the question for the online question, because I didn't capture that. Many development partners are highly supportive improvement of resource mobilization. At the same time, in their own countries, other forces, including ministries of economies, et cetera, are stimulating their companies to invest in developing countries requesting tax incentives. The question is, how can we reconcile this and align own country interest and development cooperation? We have to have, yeah, I did hear it, thank you. We have to have these tough conversations. I think, you know, this need to be part of the conversation. It doesn't mean that, I mean, it's great for developed countries to give incentives for private sectors to come to the continent, but we need to, doing having this evidence, you know, evidence-based assessment on what helps, what doesn't help, how this has helped before, what other policy instruments would be more relevant to these investors would be the type of conversations we want to have and we want to come to them very well prepared. So we cannot just take, like, you know, for granted that if these investors need to come, they need to have tax breaks because, I mean, you can give them the tax break and they can live in a couple of years, not, you know, creating much impact. So it's about really having a thorough assessment of what need to be done, what would be more attractive and more important for these foreign companies to come to the continent and working also with these donor countries on how, you know, to support perhaps even what would be even more useful is providing, you know, a affordable financing to, you know, these foreign companies to come and have production facilities. Perhaps it's, you know, ensuring better energy supply, better roads, ability to expatriate profits. So it's a conversation that has to be wider than just this one issue to get deeper impact for the continent. Thank you. I think we have time for one more question. I can see more than one hand. Well, I think we're almost getting close to 10.30. So let's take two short questions. I'm sorry, I know others have wanted to ask questions, but we are running out of time. There's one question. I know that the lady there was very keen to ask it. So you can go ahead and then there's a question somewhere here I thought. Yeah, okay. So let's take that question first. Go ahead. Thank you. Thank you so much for the good presentation. My name is Karen Kandie from the National Treasury of the public of Kenya. My two questions. One, just some emphasis that a lot of FDI is foreign direct investments come with a kind of a carot and stick, you know, we want to invest 10 million of this, but we need these tax incentives. It's almost unknown narrative that with the promise of investing, they want a tax exemption. How do we have this conversation so that it doesn't look present for you as an investor to come and ask for tax exemption in an African country, knowing that it's a carot and stick issue because we need jobs. So, and we need that foreign direct investment. So we tend to have our doors open because we've got to get jobs for our many youth that are not employed. But we need the other side also to have the goodwill of knowing that paying tax is part of the narrative because you need the port, you need the airline to ship your goods. I mean, you need all the infrastructure that we have to build with the taxes. So it shouldn't look a pleasant thing for you to ask for the taxes. And in some cases when there is a tax break, let's say 10 years tax break, then you'll find after the 10 years, investor changes, either leaves or changes the names to a different name and re-registers another company that negotiates for tax breaks. So it's not a present thing. Then the other issue that you did mention was on property taxes. There is scope for that. Just to give you underground 70% of the population for instance in Kenya lives in the rural areas. And I believe even for the other African countries it is close to that percentage. And in the rural areas we have a freehold land as opposed to leasehold. Now freehold land, we don't tax. Leasehold land which is in the urban areas, we tax. However, even in the urban areas, 70% of the urban population lives in the slums. And that means that that is land which is not titled and probably nobody even knows who owns that land because people have simply been building the shanties with time, most of it nobody knows who owns it. So we have a very small percentage that is actually taxable. Nevertheless, there is scope to have the system streamlined so that it is known this title is owned by so and so and this is the sizing which what Kenya has been doing, digitalizing the land titles. And then I believe once we finish this digitalizing we should be able to invoice the land owners because previously what would happen is people would only pay the land rates and taxes when they need to transfer the land because you can't transfer the land with the reels. Can we, sorry, but we have to cut it short but we're running out of time. Yes, I think those are my two questions. Thank you very much. And so very quick question from you, yeah. Thank you. My name is Magnus Erickson. I'm a mineral economist and mineral policy advisor. At present there the green energy transition increases demand for minerals and metals of which Africa has plenty. At the same time you mentioned that tax exemptions in mining is quite common, you mentioned 48 countries. So my question is, are there any plans or ideas how to improve and optimize taxation of mining and minerals in Africa in this present window of opportunity? Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Mosley, two minutes for the response. You already passed that. So if you don't mind, I think the first question is really about these two issues. One is about the trade-off removing incentives for FDI and whether that will lead to such a FDI not coming into Africa and not getting jobs. The second is question of whether there is actually property out there that can be taxed at all. I mean, if most of the land is either informally held and so on. The second is about the mining question that came up. So quick responses, thank you very much. Sure. The FDI conditional, I think the conversation would also need to be, OK, perhaps how many jobs do you have a threshold if they're creating x thousand of jobs you could consider that they get the tax break and for upfront time limit and perhaps then even be evaluated afterwards whether to be these incentives to be continued or not. So it can also be so you can condition it from a country perspective on how many jobs locally they are creating, how many thousand of jobs, how many locals are they training in terms of knowledge transfer. So you can also make it conditional and accountable for these companies whenever they get these incentives that it's conditional on specific criteria and you can track that whether or not to be renewed perhaps annually every two years. But that need to be part of the conversation. In terms of the property and the fact that many of them are most of the land would be for example in slums or areas where low income and poverty is concentrated. Part of the property tax in many countries would have a minimum valuation above which these start to apply. So that's why this issue of valuation is very important. Once this is done, you can actually have a kind of a floor for which above which these property taxation start to kick in. And in many countries that apply property tax that actually the way so there's a minimum valuation that is kind of exemptual, it's not covered and above which there's kind of gradual taxation. And of course the digitalizing and making sure that there are a registration for these slums would be critical. In terms of the last one on the mining, I think this is an area that need to be looked into more but I think the idea of just Africa exporting raw material is just Africa exporting development opportunities. So there need to be beyond just the mining itself what else is done. It cannot just be exporting raw material. There need to be a value addition around these raw materials so that actually provides opportunities for economic development. But I think this is an area and I know this is not an easy area but an area that really need to be looked into in a lot more detail and strategically in terms of looking forward. How do we reshift our development model? Thank you Dr. Mohsen, it's an important point to add that tax or domestic revenue should be seen in a broader context to understand the development process of low income countries especially Africa. And it's not just about mobilizing revenue but looking at the overall development trajectory of countries that are in the low income space. That's a really important point to keep in mind when we discuss all the different areas and themes we're going to listen to the next two and a half days. Dr. Mohsen, thank you so much. I know you have been very busy with the Africa Climate Summit. Thank you for so generously giving your time to us this morning and I hope that we'll be obviously working with you in ECA in Ibiza to work, think about the issues that you raised in this lecture which are really very important. Thank you so much.