The African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF) convened tax researchers, ATO focal points, and regional experts from across the continent in Pretoria from 24–26 November 2025 for the African Tax Outlook (ATO) Peer-Learning and Validation Meeting—a gathering that continues to shape Africa’s most authoritative tax data publication.
Speaking at the opening, ATAF Executive Secretary Ms. Mary Baine underscored why this process remains one of ATAF’s most strategic annual engagements.
“High-quality tax data is no longer a technical luxury but a strategic necessity,” she emphasised. “It guides policy decisions, informs tax reforms, enhances compliance, and strengthens accountability between governments and citizens.”
This year’s meeting brought together Heads of Research from tax administrations, ATO data collectors, the Regional Tax Outlook Experts (RTO) and ATAF Secretariat drafting team to validate the indicators, datasets, and emerging themes for the 2025 ATO Edition.
The sessions reflected the growing sophistication of ATAF’s continental knowledge agenda. Participants worked through updated indicators, thematic expansions, and assessments of tax system performance across regions—using administrative data to examine tax capacity, tax structure, compliance levels, digitisation and revenue risks.
The Executive Secretary highlighted how the ATO has become central to Africa’s domestic revenue mobilisation narrative:
“The ATO has grown to become one of the most important knowledge instruments in Africa’s revenue mobilisation agenda. Its datasets increasingly anchor reform dialogue, performance benchmarks, and country-specific interventions.”
She further stressed how the ATO, RTOs and Country Profiles together form a powerful continental knowledge ecosystem:
Over three days, the agenda covered:
• Presentation of updated ATO datasets and indicators
• Preliminary findings for the 2025 ATO edition
• Regional Tax Outlook (RTO) performance reviews
• Analyses of administrative efficiency, tax capacity, and revenue risks
• Applied research insights to strengthen policy dialogue
• Development of new ATAF Country Profiles
Sessions were driven by regional teams from East, West, North, South, and Central Africa, creating an environment where countries compared their tax system performance against regional peers, exchanged experiences, and shaped a more coherent narrative of Africa’s tax landscape.
Ms. Baine paid special tribute to the ATO Focal Persons—the backbone of this work:
“You drive this process. You ensure data integrity. You help steer Africa’s tax narrative by ensuring that our data reflect our realities accurately and consistently.”
The 2025 meeting reinforced ATAF’s commitment to delivering a stronger, more insightful ATO each year. As the Executive Secretary noted:
“Our goal is simple: the ATO should become more useful, more insightful, and more valuable year on year—especially for our revenue administrations.”
