Africa is estimated to lose substantial resources through illicit financial flows (IFFs). These flows originate from several sources: revenues from illegal activities, tax avoidance, abusive profit-shifting, trade mis-invoicing, corruption, and others. IFFs divert resources from social development and raise serious problems for financing development in Africa. They also undermine governance, hamper structural transformation and reduce the rate of taxpayer compliance, therefore affecting overall economic activity. These risks have been recognized in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, however, there is no globally-accepted methodology to monitor IFFs. This reduces clarity about how large these flows are, where they are coming from and where they are going to. The lack of a reliable, objective indicator can also undermine the political will to tackle the problem. In this context, this project, implemented through a collaboration between ECA and UNCTAD, will attempt to develop a statistical methodology to estimate IFFs from African countries, with the objectives of (a) gaining knowledge on the size of IFFs and their origins, (b) strengthening the political will to tackle this problem, and (c) providing evidence for a targeted and effective policy response.