The Impact Of The West Africa Leaks

More than a dozen journalists from 11 West African countries collaborated earlier this year. They looked into the offshore financial dealings of the rich and powerful in the region and called it the West Africa Leaks. 

I had completely missed this (nothing about it here in the Dutch press, unlike with the Panama and Paradise Papers), so I was glad to find Al Jazeera’s program The Listening Post reported about it.

The investigation was coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The journalists were given access to data relating to offshore finance in six major leaks, and were shown how to navigate their away around roughly 30 million documents. West Africa accounts for more than one-third of the estimated $50bn that leaves Africa each year illegally.

The stories were published simultaneously across the region and lit up social media, but the official reaction was muted.

That governments were slow to respond to the revelations in the West Africa Leaks — or ignored them completely — came as no surprise

What was more concerning was the lack of response from other news outlets in the region. One would expect stories about high-level corruption and financial irregularities in some of the poorest countries on earth to top the news agenda.

But the subjects of these investigations are often the same people who control what gets reported in West Africa, and what does not.

However, Sandrine Sawadogo, reporter at L'Economiste du Faso in Burkino Faso said: 

Among the intellectuals in this country, things are changing and people are more interested in illicit financial streams.

Even if the impact has been limited, we’ve reached the first milestone because we now have journalists trained on this matter who will follow everything that has to do with illicit financial traffic.