Edited by Léonce Ndikumana, Distinguished Professor of Economics and Director of the African Development Policy Program, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and James K. Boyce, Senior Fellow, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Léonce Ndikumana is a Distinguished Professor of Economics and Director of the African Development Policy Program at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, a member of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation, and an Honorary Professor of Economics at the University of Cape Town and the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. He held senior positions at the African Development Bank and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. His previous books include Africa's Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent (with James K. Boyce, Zed Books, 2011), and Capital Flight from Africa Causes, Effects, and Policy Issues (with S. Ibi Ajay, OUP, 2014)

James K. Boyce is a senior fellow at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His previous books include Economics for People and the Planet (Anthem, 2019), Africa's Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent (with Léonce Ndikumana, Zed Books 2011), Investing in Peace: Aid and Conditionality after Civil Wars (Oxford University Press 2002); The Philippines: The Political Economy of Growth and Impoverishment in the Marcos Era (Macmillan, 1993), and Agrarian Impasse in Bengal (OUP, 1987).

Melvin Ayogu
Adam Aboobaker,
James K. Boyce
Jean Merckaert
Karmen Naidoo
Léonce Ndikumana
Nicholas Shaxson

"This book is a valuable resource for understanding the intricacies of capital flight." - J. E. Weaver, CHOICE

"Many developing countries continue to suffer significant resource outflows, largely due to illicit capital flight. On the trail of capital flight from Africa: The Takers and the Enablers — edited by Leonce Ndikumana and James Boyce — studies this blight in sub-Saharan Africa. The world has much to learn from their forensic analysis... The West's piecemeal approach to sanctions targeting individuals is recognized as costly, time-consuming and ineffectual. Instead, the editors recommend a pre-emptive, across-the-board effort to undermine transnational networks enabling illicit financial flows. This should begin with closing financial system loopholes." - Jomo Kwame Sundaram, IPS News Agency

"This important book should be read widely by anyone interested in African political economy as well as the global mechanisms of capital flight. While most work on capital flight focuses on aggregate figures, Ndikumana, Boyce and their co-authors provide cutting-edge analysis of three major African countries as well as of the destinations for stolen funds. Marrying the best available work on the economics of capital flight with insightful case studies, the book shows the importance of fine-grained qualitative analysis for an understanding of the consequences of capital flight for Africa and the global economy more broadly." - Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, Professor of the International Politics of Africa, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford

"Léonce Ndikumana and James Boyce have been at the forefront of research on illicit financial flows since before that term was even coined, and this book confirms it once again. But where Ndikumana and Boyce are most well known for their comprehensive quantitative analyses, here they have edited a volume that focuses deliberately on the experience of specific countries suffering illicit flows. The result, part investigative journalism and part academic analysis, is to bring the damage done to countries' governance into sharp focus. The book contributes powerfully to the case to understand illicit financial flows, facilitated by rich countries as they are, as a continuation of imperial extraction which robs people not only of resources but ultimately of the right to effective statehood." - Alex Cobham, Tax Justice Network

"Under the right conditions, external capital can help lift people out of poverty in poor, capital-scarce, places. However, the social benefit from capital inflows can largely vanish if local elites syphon-off the capital and park it elsewhere for themselves. Earlier Ndikumana-Boyce calculations exposed the alarming extent of illicit capital flight from Africa. Their new edited volume provides three detailed country case studies, pointing to better data for monitoring and better policies globally. The volume provides a welcome foundation for both further research and effective action to help assure that global capital flows reduce global poverty." - Martin Ravallion, Professor of Economics, Georgetown University, and former Director of the World Bank's Research Department