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Paper short abstract

This paper analyses how Big Tech corporations are extracting income from digital markets in Africa and shifting the profits to tax havens in Cayman Islands, Ireland, and Luxembourg among the other secrecy jurisdictions. .

Paper long abstract

This paper analyses how Big Tech corporations are extracting income from digital markets in Africa and shifting the profits to tax havens in Cayman Islands, Ireland, and Luxembourg among the other secrecy jurisdictions. The paper particularly focuses on the unethical tax practices of the Silicon Valley-based tech giants including Google, Amazon, Facebook/Meta, Apple and Microsoft as well as Chinese tech firms such as Baidu, Alibaba, Huawei, and Tencent that have become pervasive in Africa. While the tech giants have been celebrated on the continent for their imagined contribution towards digital transformation, there are claims that these firms practice aggressive tax avoidance, transfer-pricing, intellectual property migration, and IP-licensing to minimize their tax liabilities in Africa. These practices raise questions of distributive justice, fiscal sovereignty, and revenue integrity. Viewed from an Afro-decolonial approach, it is argued that the tech titans are clandestinely involved in intensifying their rent extraction and capitalist accumulation at the expense of Africa’s financial health. This is not dissimilar to the traditional multinational corporations that have decapitalized Africa since the days of slavery, colonial encounters, and Cold War years. The paper concludes by canvasing for the decolonization of African agency in order to stop the bleeding and the decapitalization of the continent in this digital age. Using data from press reports, policy briefs, and academic literature as well as key informants, the paper seeks to contribute towards a deeper understanding of the contradictions of the digital economy/platform economy in Africa.