The expected outcomes of the two-day workshop were to dissect the EMT Curriculum, understand its intricacies based on lessons learnt from its past two editions and finally, to discuss and analyse the feasibility of the programme in the context of African and European universities. Key to the deliberations was the need to ensure that the future harmonised EMT effectively responds to the African revenue authorities’ “wish list”, which was derived from the 2017 needs assessment, and addresses their skills challenges.

ATAF’s Executive Master’s in Taxation is a technical Master’s programme launched in 2014 for both Francophone and Anglophone Africa, the latter in collaboration with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, with the aim of enhancing African expertise and generating a pool of tax leaders, policy makers and administrators on the continent.  

After a resoundingly successful two-year run which resulted in the training of 83 graduates from 25 African revenue authorities, the EMT programme was temporarily put on hold to take stock of the milestones so far reached, draw lessons from past experiences and overhaul the programme to ensure its continued impact and relevance. 

The EMT Curriculum Development workshop was the second in a series of three. It therefore built on the work accomplished in the first phase by fine-tuning aspects related to the crucial transfer project (the practical phase of the programme), determining the most conducive and adequate learning environments for students, adapting the programme’s curriculum to the African context and developing a strategy for its long-term financial sustainability. 

The tendering process for the selection of African and European partner universities will be launched in February 2019, after the third and last workshop of the series and the official re-launch of the EMT Programme is likely to start in September 2019. 

For more information on the EMT Programme please contact Ms. Jessica Johmann, Programme Specialist: Research & EMT in Africa, at jjohmann@ataftax.org.