In 2021, REEP entered into an agreement with Tax Justice Network Africa (TJNA): a pan-African civil society network based in Kenya. TJNA aims to encourage and support African governments to implement better and fairer tax systems. it has a network of organisations in most African countries that aim to promote tax justice at all levels, and to highlight, and curb, illicit financial flows out of Africa. Its focus is not only on tobacco taxation but the whole tax system, and it has partner organisations in most countries. Their programme to ensure better tobacco excise-tax systems is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
REEP was approached by TJNA to support partners in five Anglophone countries (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Zambia), specifically on tobacco taxation. This entailed developing Tobacco Excise Tax Simulation Models (TETSiMs) for the various partner organisations and training them how to use and independently keep up the models. To date we have had meaningful relations with partners in Kenya (the NTA, see section 3.2c), South Africa (the Rural Health Advocacy Project, based at Wits University), and Zambia (Centre for Trade Policy and Development). The funding from TJNA was also used to finance the Tobacco Taxation 101 online course.
The TJNA is also the lead partner of a consortium of five organisations pushing for better tobacco-tax policies and administration systems in African countries. The organisations that are part of this are TJNA, the African regional office of the WHO (WHO-AFRO), the African Tax Administration Forum (ATAF), Consortium pour la Recherche Economique et Sociale (CRES) and REEP. In September 2024 Zunda and Corné attended a two-day meeting of the consortium partners, where the partners committed to a more coordinated approach in supporting countries to adopt better tax structures and higher tax rates.
Somewhat independently of the work of the consortium, ATAF has approached REEP for advice on tobacco-tax related matters. REEP has been asked to present at a workshop, organised by ATAF, on tobacco-tax policy and administration in October 2024.
REEP is currently in discussions with the TJNA to renew the funding for the next three years, starting in early 2025. The work will be mostly a continuation of the work that we have done in the previous round of funding. In addition, given the desire of the TJNA partners to understand the economics of novel tobacco products better, a substantial proportion of the funding will go to supporting research in this area.