The Africa Governance Report impact of increased growth on the continent. The panel also noted that corrupt practices in Africa are not necessarily the source of these outflows; rather, corruption and weak governance often facilitate them. In addition to technical capacity, lack of political will by governments often undermines the struggle against illicit financial flows. Estimating the exact level of IFFs from Africa is a challenge, due to lack of clear data, and because IFFs are not easy to trace since they are generally well concealed. So far, only indirect methods have been used by the United Nations, think tanks and non-profit organisations to determine the volumes of outflows from the continent. the volume of IFFs is increasing as table below shows. Figure 5: Illicit Financial Flow Trends, 2004 to 2013 (USD) Source: Global Financial Integrity, 2017, Illicit Financial Flows to and from Developing Countries: 2005-2014 The development impact of illicit financial flows from Africa is numerous. They erode the revenue for public investment and social spending, hence weakening governance and institutions. They eat into domestic savings and perpetuate dependence on official development assistance, thus deepening reliance on donors. By discouraging value creation, illicit financial flows also negatively impact African aspirations for structural transformation. This means they subvert the implementation of NDPs, the AU Agenda 2063 and UN SDGs. Therefore, African governments should look for ways to stop IFFs to maximise their revenues, retain investible resources within their countries, and impede criminal and illicit activities. At the continental level, the recommendations by the panel asking the AUC, UNECA, AfDB and RECs to follow up the development and implementation of a systematic and coherent plan (Anti-IFF Project) should be taken seriously. Page 73 of 96