The Taxscape · Africa, raised by the tax it collects

Forty-four tax systems, one continent

Every coloured country is a member of the African Tax Administration Forum, and every number in this story comes from the forum's own Databank (pulled 14 October 2026).

Scroll slowly. Each step changes one thing, and the words always say what changed.

Step 1 · 2024

Height is tax

Each country now rises to its tax revenue as a share of GDP. Namibia stands tallest at 31.5%; Chad is lowest at 5.0%.

One height scale runs through the whole story, so every step can be compared with every other. Pale, flat countries did not report for 2024 or are not ATAF members.

Step 2

The typical member

The thin level laid across the continent is the median member, 14.3% of GDP: where a country rises through it, it collects more. 19 members sit above it and 19 below it.

Step 3

Against the world, on the same basis

The red level is the World Bank's world average for central-government tax revenue, 13.9%. On that like-for-like basis, 22 of 38 members collect as much or more.

Comparisons with the OECD's headline ratio, which also counts social security contributions and local taxes, overstate the gap.

Step 5 · change per year, 2012 to 2024

Catching up, and drifting apart

Colour now shows the change in each country's ratio per year since 2012: green gained, red lost. 17 members gained and 15 lost.

Low starters gained slightly faster (slope -0.033), yet the spread between countries widened from 4.6 to 5.7 points. The notebook shows why both can be true.

Step 6 · 2024

Taken apart by tax

Each prism is now split into what it is made of: VAT (blue), personal income tax (green), corporate income tax (brown), import duty (purple) and everything else (grey).

This needs the main tax heads in every year from 2015, which 29 members report; the rest fade. Counting each country once, VAT averages 34.3% of tax revenue and import duty 10.0%.

Step 7 · the East African Community

Where Uganda sits

Uganda collected 12.6% of GDP in 2024, 26 of 38 reporting members.

Among its EAC partners: Rwanda 14.6%, Kenya 14.3%, Burundi 14.0%, Tanzania 13.2%, Democratic Republic of Congo 9.8%. No 2024 figure for South Sudan.

Over 2010 to 2025, each 1% of growth in Uganda's economy has brought about 1.15% more tax.

The end of the story, the start of the data

Now look for yourself

Every country has a full sheet, every chart can be downloaded, and the wire checks the Databank every six hours. The links are just below.