News

ICTD at the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development

26th June 2025
A photo of Palacio Congresos in Seville

Domestic resource mobilisation (DRM) is one of the core issues on the agenda at next week’s Financing for Development Conference. The conference’s final outcome document, the Compromiso de Sevilla states that “public resources, policies, and plans will be at the heart of our efforts for a sustainable development drive.”

It also expressly notes that member states will “provide support to countries in their efforts to strengthen [DRM]” and called on development partners to “collectively at least double this support to developing countries by 2030.”

ICTD Executive Director Giulia Mascagni said, “with the sharp decrease in aid, this a particularly crucial time to invest in building sustainable and fair tax systems which both underpin development and build trust.”

New brief on succeeding in ‘The Tax Era of Development’

Ahead of the conference, ICTD has published a new policy brief titled ‘The Tax Era of Development: Taxing Smarter for Equity, Growth and Resilience’. The brief asserts that the world is now “firmly in the tax era of development, in which domestic revenue is no longer one of many finance sources, but the primary one.”

Written by ICTD’s research leads, the brief describes how “the future of poverty reduction, expanding public health and education, making progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals… are all effectively dependent on [lower-income countries’] ability to rapidly develop their tax capacity”.

The authors caution, however, that “if done poorly, these efforts may not only be unsuccessful on their own terms, but will also have damaging spillover effects: deepening inequalities, weakening business environments, triggering public protests, and eroding trust.”

Raising more revenue requires well-designed reforms tailored to local political, economic, and administrative realities. As they write, “The key to thriving in this new era is not just taxing harder, but taxing smarter – implementing evidence-based reforms, and integrating research more closely with tax administration.” Read the brief here.

Side event on the critical role of research for DRM

The ICTD will co-host a side-event at the FfD4 conference on the morning of July 3rd titled ‘From Insight to Impact: Harnessing Research Collaboration to Build Better Tax Systems’.

In partnership with ODI Global, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), the event will feature leading experts and high-level African officials from ministries of finance and revenue authorities, exploring how research partnerships have driven tangible improvements in tax policy and administration, and how these successes can be scaled further. Register for the event here.

Launch of new Coalition for Tax Expenditure Reform

The ICTD is also a founding member of a new Coalition for Tax Expenditure Reform, which will be launched under the Seville Platform for Action. Revenue forgone from tax expenditures is equivalent to 4% of GDP and 25% of tax revenue globally. In partnership with IISD, ODI Global, the Council on Economic Policies (CEP), and the German Institute of Development Sustainability (IDOS), the Coalition aims to drive “a decade of focused action on tax expenditure reform.” The Coalition will help design, implement, and monitor tax expenditures more effectively and to ensure they align with countries’ development goals, protect tax revenues, and promote sustainable growth.

The launch will take place on June 30th, from 15:30 to 16:00 in the Seville Platform for Action Initiative Announcement Room.

Meet our team in Seville

Connect with the members of our team who will be participating in the conference:

For media enquiries, please contact Emilie at [email protected] or on +44(0)7973197871

Dr Mascagni will speak at the following side events:
Illicit Financial Flows, Fiscal Space and Fair Taxation: Advancing Africa-Europe Cooperation for a United Measurement and Reform Agenda
  • Date: 1st July (Tuesday)
  • Time: 10:30-12:00 CET
  • Venue: Side Event Room 5
  • Organisers: Africa Europe Foundation and partners
Tax Inspectors Without Borders: A Decade of Impact and the Road Ahead
  • Date: 2nd July (Wednesday)
  • Time: 8:30-10:00 CET
  • Venue: Side Event Room 14
  • Organisers: UNDP, OECD, and partners
Dr Prichard will speak at the following side events:
Financing the Localisation of the SDGs
  • Date: 2nd July (Wednesday)
  • Time: 09:30-11:15 CET
  • Venue: Sala Santo Tomas, Seville City Hall, Nueva Square, 1, 41001, Sevilla
  • Organisers: Local2030 Coalition, UNEP, UNDP, UN-HABITAT, and UNICEF
Financing our Urban Future: Scaling Up Investment in and through Cities
  • Date: 3rd July (Thursday)
  • Time: 12:30-14:00 CET
  • Venue: Side Event Room 24
  • Organisers: UN-HABITAT and partners

We look forward to either seeing you in Seville, or sharing our reflections with you afterwards!

Hear from our FFD4 Engagement Lead:

Giulia Mascagni

Giulia Mascagni is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies and Executive Director of the ICTD. Her main area of work is taxation, but she also has research interest in public finance, evaluation of public policy, and aid effectiveness. She is an economist by training, holding a PhD in Economics from the University of Sussex. Her main geographical interest lies in African countries, with a particular focus on Ethiopia and Rwanda.

Wilson Prichard

Wilson Prichard is an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, Chair of the Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI) and former Executive Officer of the International Centre for Tax and Development (2020-2024). His research focuses on the relationship between taxation and citizen demands for improved governance in Africa.

Giovanni Occhiali

Dr Giovanni Occhiali is a Development Economist based at the Institute of Development Studies, where he works on a number of projects related to Tax Administration and Compliance, Tax and Governance and co-leads ICTD’s capacity building programme together with Dr Max Gallien. His research focuses on Sub-Saharan Africa, and outside of the field of taxation his main interests are energy economics and industrial policies. He holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham and prior to joining ICTD, he was a Researcher at the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei and an Overseas Development Institute Fellow at the National Revenue Authority of Sierra Leone.

Moyo Arewa

Moyo is the Programme Director for the Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI). He was previously the Manager for Strategic Initiatives at (ICTD) and, before then, a Policy Development Officer at the City of Toronto. His tax research has focused on understanding how new technologies impact tax policy, administration, and public service delivery.

Max Gallien

Max Gallien is a Research Fellow at the ICTD. His research specialises in the politics of informal and illegal economies, the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa and development politics. He completed his PhD at the London School of Economics. Max co-leads the informality and taxation programme with Vanessa, as well as the ICTD’s capacity building programme.

Emilie Wilson

Emilie Wilson is Head of Communications and Impact at ICTD. She is responsible for the development and implementation of the research uptake and communications strategy across the ICTD’s programmes, oversees outreach and dissemination via ICTD channels, and is the primary contact for stakeholder relations and media enquiries. Emilie is based at the Institute of Development Studies and has over ten years experience working on communications and uptake with international research programmes.

Rhiannon McCluskey

Rhiannon is a Policy Engagement Consultant and former Director of Communications and Impact at ICTD.

Daisy Ogembo

Daisy Ogembo is a Research Fellow at ICTD. Often using an interdisciplinary approach, her work focuses on the taxation of hard-to-tax groups, constitutional issues in taxation, and digital aspects of taxation. She earned her DPhil from the University of Oxford and was the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including the British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and the Harvey Fellowship. Prior to joining ICTD, Daisy was an Assistant Professor of law at the University of Birmingham. Her current research includes completing a monograph on taxation and transformative constitutionalism, investigating legal and governance issues in the use of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) in tax administration, and expanding her research on higher income earners in the informal sector.

Martin Hearson

Martin Hearson is a Research Fellow at IDS, Research Director of the ICTD and the International Tax programme lead. His research focuses on the politics of international business taxation, and in particular the relationship between developed and developing countries. Before joining ICTD, Martin was a fellow in international political economy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, teaching courses on political economy and global financial governance.

Vanessa van den Boogaard

Vanessa van den Boogaard is a Research Fellow at the ICTD and a Senior Research Associate at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. She completed her PhD thesis on informal revenue generation and statebuilding in Sierra Leone, and has ongoing research on the topic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia. Vanessa leads the ICTD’s new programme on civil society engagement in tax reform and co-leads the research programme on informal taxation.
Research theme:
Keywords: domestic resource mobilisation, FfD4, financing for development, taxation
Image credit: © Xemenendura/Wikimedia Commons
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