Conclusions

Abstract

This chapter summarizes the main messages from the book and distils key policy recommendations. The scale of capital flight from Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, and South Africa is large relative to the size of these economies, and it constitutes a drain on national resources, a handicap to economic growth, and a manifestation of the “resource curse.” Capital flight is the outcome of plunder by a network of actors and enablers, both domestic and foreign, facilitated by the opaque international financial system. The nexus between plunder and capital flight is not purely an internal problem of African countries; nor is it purely an international relationship in which an imperial power preys on faraway lands as in earlier centuries. Rather it is a transnational phenomenon that spans national boundaries, operated by a network of individuals and institutions who are bound together by mutual gain regardless of nationality. It is therefore clear that addressing the problem of capital flight requires a global strategy.