This year, Global Financial Integrity and Academics Stand Against Poverty will be awarding the fifth annual Amartya Sen Prizes to the two best original essays on assessing the human impact of illicit financial flows out of Africa. Entered essays should be about 7,000 to 9,000 words long. There is a first prize of $5,000 and a second prize of $3,000.

Illicit financial flows are generally defined as cross-border movements of funds that are illegally earned, transferred, or used. Examples are funds earned through illegal trafficking in persons, drugs or weapons; funds illegally transferred through mispriced exchanges (e.g., among affiliates of a multinational corporation seeking to shift profits to reduce taxes); and funds used to bribe foreign officials. Because many African countries have large natural resource sectors and often strained administrative capacities, illicit financial flows out of African countries tend to be substantial relative to their GDP or overall trade. And because massive and severe poverty persists in these countries, their people can ill afford such losses of capital and tax revenues.

Mindful of the Sustainable Development Goals and seeking to inspire effective political action toward reducing illicit financial flows out of Africa, we are inviting essays that assess the human impact of such outflows. Your entry may focus on one or more specific countries and on one or more specific kinds of illicit financial flows. It should then estimate the magnitude of these outflows as well as the damage they do to the affected populations – for example, through depressed investment and through reduced tax revenues leading to, inter alia, lower public spending on health, education, social security and development.

We welcome authors from diverse academic disciplines and from outside the academy. Please send your entry on or before 31 October 2018 by email attachment to Tom Cardamone at tcardamone@gfintegrity.org. Essays should be stripped of self-identifying references, formatted for blind review.

Preceding ASAP’s 2017 conference on 26 October, 2017, ASAP held an intensive workshop for its chapter network, with the goal of carrying forward our new chapter-centric strategic plan and building greater capacity to affect poverty around the world. Representatives from Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, Romania, the United Kingdom, USA and West Africa participated in the event. Activities included capacity building, sharing of achievements, networking, and brainstorming new collaborative project ideas and fundraising strategies. The day was charged with enthusiasm for our common mission and many new connections and ideas were formed.

The fourth annual Amartya Sen Prize was awarded on 27 October, 2017 by Academics Stand Against Poverty and Global Financial Integrity for the best original essay on the moral assessment of tax dodging. This year’s recipient is Mattia Anesa, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Queensland, Australia.

The award was presented during the first day of the conference Onslaughts on the Poor: Corruption, Emissions, Violence, jointly organized by Yale University, Academics Stand Against Poverty and Global Financial Integrity, during which Mattia presented his work to the conference audience.