Short Abstract

Who pays for Africa’s future and who decides what can be financed? This panel examines how debt, taxation, digitalisation, financial systems and climate pressures are reshaping fiscal space, economic choices and the capacity of African states to finance transformation

Long Abstract

African states face a defining economic tension: development ambitions are expanding while the fiscal space to finance them remains constrained. Governments must fund infrastructure, social protection, climate responses and digital transformation while managing public debt, changing tax bases, financial-sector pressures and competing expenditure priorities. These pressures raise a fundamental question: who pays for Africa’s future, and who determines which futures can be financed?

Taking African Prisms into the terrain of political economy and public finance, this panel examines fiscal sovereignty not simply as the authority to tax and spend, but as the capacity to shape development choices under changing domestic and global economic conditions. It asks how digitisation is transforming where value is created and taxed; how debt and financing structures affect fiscal choices; whether digital finance can widen economic participation and revenue mobilisation; and how climate and green transitions redistribute costs, risks and opportunities.

The panel invites theoretical, empirical and policy-oriented contributions spanning public finance, development economics, environmental economics, financial-sector studies, digital economics, and micro- and macroeconomics. Contributions may address taxation, public expenditure, sovereign debt, fiscal sustainability, fintech, digital taxation, climate finance, green fiscal policy, informality, inequality, financial inclusion and development finance.

Rather than treating fiscal constraints as merely technical, the panel asks how economic institutions, policies and financing arrangements shape what becomes possible. It seeks new perspectives on how African economies can expand fiscal agency while financing transformations that are economically viable, socially responsive and resilient

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