International Consultant – Updating Illicit Financial Flows Estimates in Africa: Measurement, Methodological Advances, and Technical Guidance and Operationalizing the Database through the Illicit Financial Flows Application

About the Organization

The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) is commissioning this study to update existing estimates of illicit financial flows from Africa using improved methodologies and to develop a comprehensive methodological guide that supports consistent, transparent, and policy-relevant estimation at regional and country levels.

Job Summary

Under the supervision of the MGD director of the ECA and the section chief of Macroeconomic Analysis, Institutions & Economic Governance Section (MIGS), the consultant will be responsible for delivering a rigorous and policy-oriented analytical output that integrates empirical estimation with methodological development and an IFF app. The consultant will design and implement the analytical framework for estimating illicit financial flows, ensuring that it is grounded in both established approaches and recent methodological advances. This will include the collection, cleaning, and harmonization of relevant datasets, as well as the application of appropriate statistical and analytical techniques to generate updated estimates. In parallel, the consultant will undertake a systematic assessment of existing methodologies, identifying their respective strengths and limitations and evaluating their applicability in the African context. This will require careful documentation of assumptions, data constraints, and potential sources of bias, as well as the development of approaches to mitigate these challenges. A central responsibility of the assignment will be the preparation of a comprehensive methodological guide or technical note. This will translate the analytical work into a structured and accessible framework that can be used by policymakers and technical practitioners to estimate illicit financial flows in a consistent and replicable manner. The development of the IFF app will constitute a core component of the assignment.

The consultant will design, develop and operationalize an interactive platform that transforms ECA’s trade misinvoicing database into an accessible analytical and knowledge-sharing tool. The platform will enable users to explore illicit financial flow estimates through aggregate and country-level dashboards, partner and sector analyses, interactive visualizations, and customizable filters across countries, commodities, sectors, trading partners, time periods, and estimation methods. The consultant will ensure that the platform supports data exploration, evidence-based analysis, and dissemination of results for a wide range of stakeholders, including policymakers, customs administrations, researchers, journalists, and development practitioners. The consultant will also prepare the necessary technical documentation and facilitate knowledge transfer to support the platform’s sustainability and future use by ECA. Throughout the assignment, the consultant will engage closely with ECA technical teams, incorporating feedback and ensuring that the outputs are aligned with institutional priorities. The consultant will also be expected to synthesize the analytical findings into a coherent narrative that highlights key trends, methodological considerations, and policy implications, and to present these findings in a format suitable for both technical and policy audiences.

Key Responsibilities

Background

Illicit financial flows (IFFs) continue to pose a significant challenge to economic development in Africa, undermining domestic resource mobilization, weakening fiscal sustainability, and constraining the ability of governments to finance development priorities. Financial outflows associated with trade misinvoicing, tax evasion, profit shifting, and other cross-border leakages reduce the effectiveness of public policy and limit the resources available for infrastructure, social services, and structural transformation. Despite sustained attention to the issue, the measurement of IFFs remains complex and contested. Existing estimates vary widely due to differences in conceptual definitions, data sources, and methodological approaches. Traditional estimation techniques, including mirror trade analysis and residual-based methods, have provided important insights but are subject to limitations related to data inconsistencies, aggregation bias, and limited coverage of emerging channels of financial leakage. The evolving global economic environment has further complicated measurement. The increasing integration of global value chains, the growing mobility of capital, and the digitalization of economic activity have introduced new pathways through which illicit flows can occur. These developments have widened the gap between existing estimation approaches and the underlying economic realities they seek to capture. At the same time, advances in data availability and analytical techniques provide an opportunity to improve the measurement of IFFs. More granular trade data, enhanced financial statistics, and improved statistical methods enable more robust and policy-relevant estimation. However, these advances have not yet been systematically integrated into a standardized framework for measuring illicit financial flows in Africa. In this context, ECA is commissioning this study to update existing estimates of illicit financial flows from Africa using improved methodologies and to develop a comprehensive methodological guide that supports consistent, transparent, and policy-relevant estimation at regional and country levels.

Objectives of the Assignment

• The consultant will produce an analytical study with the following objectives:
  • Generate updated estimates of annual illicit financial flows from Africa using the most recent available data;
  • Apply and refine advanced methodologies for estimating IFFs, including trade misinvoicing techniques and complementary financial flow approaches;
  • Assess the consistency, robustness, and limitations of alternative estimation methods;
  • Develop a comprehensive methodological guide/technical note to support standardized and replicable estimation of IFFs by Member States.
• The consultant will also develop an interactive digital platform that enables policymakers, customs agencies, researchers, journalists, and development partners to query, visualize, and download trade mis-invoicing data by country, commodity, trading partner, sector, and year.

Scope of Work

The consultant will undertake a comprehensive analytical study aimed at updating the measurement of illicit financial flows (IFFs) from Africa, while advancing the methodological foundations that underpin their estimation. The work will be structured around three interrelated components: empirical estimation, methodological refinement, and development of a standardized analytical framework.

• The first component will focus on the measurement and estimation of illicit financial flows. This will involve the compilation and harmonization of multiple data sources, including international trade statistics, balance of payments data, and financial account information. Building on these datasets, the consultant will generate updated annual estimates of IFFs at the continental and subregional levels, and, where data permit, at the country level. The analysis will examine temporal trends and provide an assessment of the relative importance of different channels of illicit flows, with particular attention to trade-related leakages and broader financial discrepancies.
• The second component will focus on methodological assessment and refinement. The consultant will critically review existing approaches to estimating illicit financial flows, including trade misinvoicing techniques and residual-based methods, and assess their underlying assumptions, strengths, and limitations. This review will be complemented by the application of improved analytical techniques, including the use of advanced estimation strategies and more disaggregated trade data and systematic adjustments for known statistical distortions such as transport costs, re-exports, and reporting asymmetries. The analysis will also explore the integration of complementary indicators derived from financial accounts in order to strengthen the robustness and internal consistency of the estimates. Particular attention will be given to evaluating the sensitivity of results to alternative methodological choices and to identifying areas where existing approaches may either overstate or understate the scale of illicit flows.
• The third component will focus on the development of a coherent and standardized methodological framework for estimating illicit financial flows in Africa. Drawing on the empirical and methodological work undertaken in the earlier stages, the consultant will develop a structured analytical framework that clearly defines the conceptual scope of IFFs, outlines step-by-step estimation procedures, and specifies data requirements and sources. The framework will explicitly document key assumptions, methodological choices, and limitations, with a view to ensuring transparency and replicability. It will also be designed to be adaptable to different country contexts, taking into account variations in data availability and institutional capacity, while maintaining consistency with international statistical standards. Across these components, the consultant will ensure that the analysis moves beyond measurement to provide policy-relevant interpretation. This will include linking the findings to broader issues of domestic resource mobilization, trade policy, and economic governance, and identifying how improved measurement can support more targeted and effective policy responses to illicit financial flows.
• The fourth component will involve the development of the IFF App. The proposed platform would convert the database into a user-friendly and queryable digital system with interactive visualizations, country dashboards, downloadable datasets, and comparative analytical tools. Users would be able to track illicit financial flows across countries, commodities, sectors, trading partners, and time periods interactively. This will reinforce ECA as the institutional home for trade misinvoicing data on Africa, anchoring a long-running methodological lead. It will also empower African country officials, customs agencies, and sector specialists to act on illicit flows in their own domains, not only read about them in reports while building capacity by distributing analytical leverage across every user.

Duties and Responsibilities

Under the supervision of the MGD director of the ECA and the section chief of Macroeconomic Analysis, Institutions & Economic Governance Section (MIGS), the consultant will be responsible for delivering a rigorous and policy-oriented analytical output that integrates empirical estimation with methodological development and an IFF app. The consultant will design and implement the analytical framework for estimating illicit financial flows, ensuring that it is grounded in both established approaches and recent methodological advances. This will include the collection, cleaning, and harmonization of relevant datasets, as well as the application of appropriate statistical and analytical techniques to generate updated estimates. In parallel, the consultant will undertake a systematic assessment of existing methodologies, identifying their respective strengths and limitations and evaluating their applicability in the African context. This will require careful documentation of assumptions, data constraints, and potential sources of bias, as well as the development of approaches to mitigate these challenges. A central responsibility of the assignment will be the preparation of a comprehensive methodological guide or technical note. This will translate the analytical work into a structured and accessible framework that can be used by policymakers and technical practitioners to estimate illicit financial flows in a consistent and replicable manner. The development of the IFF app will constitute a core component of the assignment. The consultant will design, develop and operationalize an interactive platform that transforms ECA’s trade misinvoicing database into an accessible analytical and knowledge-sharing tool. The platform will enable users to explore illicit financial flow estimates through aggregate and country-level dashboards, partner and sector analyses, interactive visualizations, and customizable filters across countries, commodities, sectors, trading partners, time periods, and estimation methods.

The consultant will ensure that the platform supports data exploration, evidence-based analysis, and dissemination of results for a wide range of stakeholders, including policymakers, customs administrations, researchers, journalists, and development practitioners. The consultant will also prepare the necessary technical documentation and facilitate knowledge transfer to support the platform’s sustainability and future use by ECA. Throughout the assignment, the consultant will engage closely with ECA technical teams, incorporating feedback and ensuring that the outputs are aligned with institutional priorities. The consultant will also be expected to synthesize the analytical findings into a coherent narrative that highlights key trends, methodological considerations, and policy implications, and to present these findings in a format suitable for both technical and policy audiences.

Deliverables and Outputs

The consultant will deliver the following outputs, grouped under the two components of the assignment.

• Inception report covering both components: the proposed analytical framework, data sources, and methodological approach for the updated estimates, together with the platform specifications and technical architecture for the IFF application.
• Analytical study:
  • (a) Harmonized datasets and intermediate estimation outputs, together with updated annual IFF estimates covering 2000-2024 at the continental, subregional, and country levels, and where feasible at the sectoral level, accompanied by summary tables of headline results.
  • (b) Draft Analytical Report presenting the updated estimates, the methodologies applied, and key findings, together with a Draft Methodological Guide setting out the estimation framework in a structured and replicable manner.
  • (c) Final Analytical Report and Final Methodological Guide, incorporating ECA feedback.
• IFF application:
  • (a) Operational data infrastructure converting the updated database into the application’s production data layer, with query and aggregation functionality.
  • (b) Core application frontend live at the agreed URL, including aggregate views, automated country profiles, sectoral and trading-partner analyses, drill-down and filtering capabilities, interactive visualizations, and data export functionality.
  • (c) Finalized application incorporating ECA feedback and user testing, delivered with source code, technical documentation, a deployment handover package, and a virtual training session for ECA staff.
• Stakeholder presentation of the findings and demonstration of the application’s functionality and policy applications.

Required Qualifications

• Advanced degree in Economics, International Development, Law, Public Finance, or related field is required.
• A PhD preferred is an added advantage.
• Minimum of 10 years of experience in international taxation, development economics, fiscal policy, or public finance is required.
• Demonstrated expertise in Illicit Financial Flows is required.
• Experience working with African countries or developing country contexts is required.
• Familiarity with UN, OECD, or multilateral processes is desirable.

Required Skills and Competencies

• Fluency in English is required.
• Knowledge of French is an asset.

How to Apply

Apply through the United Nations careers portal: https://careers.un.org/jobSearchDescription/285026?language=en

THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CHARGE A FEE AT ANY STAGE OF THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS (APPLICATION, INTERVIEW MEETING, PROCESSING, OR TRAINING). THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CONCERN ITSELF WITH INFORMATION ON APPLICANTS’ BANK ACCOUNTS.