Following publication of Issue No. 1 of the African Tax and Customs Review (ATCR) in
December 2019, quite a lot has occurred in Africa’s fiscal landscape. The most outstanding feature
in this regard is the deepening of transformation in revenue administration, and its impact on the
way government tax agencies are relating with their customers. Many Revenue Administrations
across Africa are quickly embracing less intrusive, intelligent approaches that are supported by
data analytics and Artificial Intelligence.
A number of these agencies have established (or are at advanced stages of establishing) Data
Warehousing and Business Intelligence capabilities to analyze business trends and provide
predictive information about their clients. These capabilities help countries to not only improve
their domestic revenue yields by bringing on board new sectors and taxpayers that hitherto did not
pay their rightful share of taxes, but also improve revenue forecasting. Issue No. 2 of ATCR, which
covers the period January to March 2019, attempts to address these emerging issues in Tax and
Customs Administration, with a focus on Africa. Equally commendable are the overwhelming
enquiries, advice, suggestions, critiques and contributions that we have received following
publication of Issue No. 1. We have thus been re-energized and encouraged to release Issue No. 2
whose overriding theme is “Emerging Issues in Tax and Customs: An African Perspective.”
A number of research papers in this Issue No. 2 are dedicated to the transformation agenda in
revenue administration, its initiatives and outcomes. Many Revenue Agencies, individual tax
practitioners and researchers will find this publication very useful as a reference material on this
important subject. In addition, readers will tremendously benefit from the research papers, policy
reviews, expert opinions, tax rulings, and emerging issues in diverse aspects of taxation, customs,
public finance, and fiscal policy. The articles include original research findings, conceptual
frameworks, review papers, analytical and simulation models. Innovations and research strategies,
tactics and tools of both theoretical and practical nature are also presented. Care has been taken to
ensure that all the articles carried in this and future publication meet ATCR’s Triple Criteria:
Relevance, Currency and Rigor.

We are therefore, honored to present to our readers a cocktail of incisive articles that address
diverse issues of Tax and Customs administration and policy in a highly dynamic fiscal landscape.
A Review of this nature cannot, by any means, claim to be exhaustive in terms of addressing the
emerging issues of tax and customs in the African continent. Furthermore, we believe, that ATCR
is yet to reach many corners of the continent, a situation that is attributable mainly to language
barriers. Plans are underway to reach our Francophone and Lusophone colleagues to enhance the
level and diversity of debates generated by this publication. As always, we encourage our readers
to provide feedback on the quality, scope, timeliness and any other aspects of the journal that they
deem necessary to draw our attention to. We promise to treat readers’ ideas with the seriousness
that they deserve, and utilize them to improve future publications.