There is a widespread perception that taxing in sub-Saharan Africa has been and remains fraught with problems or government failure. This is not generally true. For more than a century, colonial administrations and independent states have steadily developed the capacity to routinely collect more...

It is now widely believed that taxation contributes to the quality of governance. There are a number of variants of the broad argument. The most general proposition is that, if governments are dependent on broad general taxation for their incomes, they will, for reasons of self-interest, be more...