Tax Incentives in Africa: A Human Rights Perspective

In a desperate quest for development, many states are granting extremely generous and untargeted tax incentives to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) without any due consideration of the inefficacy or negative spillover effects of such incentives. This is especially true for African countries which are under continuous internal and external political pressure because of their fragile economies and extremely high unemployment rate. Under such conditions therefore the absence of empirical evidence for the economic efficacy of tax incentives does little to quell the political enthusiasm. Then what is the impact of this negligent, if not deliberate, act of African countries on the socio-economic rights of their population? Are tax incentive schemes in compliance with the human rights, particularly socio-economic rights obligations of African countries? How do they affect the socio-economic rights of African people and how can these acts of governments be challenged using the relevant human rights instruments ratified by African countries? are some of the questions that this research tries to seek answer to.

Autorentext

Samuel Tilahun Tessema was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1984. He received his LLB in 2006 from Addis Ababa University; LLM in 2008 from the University of Pretoria; and Advanced Diploma in 2010 from Abo Akademi University. He is currently working as a Legal Officer at the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights in Banjul, The Gambia.