Three African countries have signed up to AEOI.

The Ivory Coast, Niger and Tanzania have joined the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes as its 124^th, 125^th and 126th members. The price of their membership was a promise to live up to the new standard of automatic exchange of information (AEOI) on request.

The new members are also obliged to participate in (or, in the case of these three, to subject themselves to) the forum’s 'peer review' process, which evaluates countries’ laws and practices. The aim of the Global Forum is to act as a policing institution that helps the world's great powers - and especially the United States - dominate the global tax agenda for the foreseeable future.

It was during last year that the Global Forum took on the job of monitoring and reviewing the implementation of the international standard of exchange of information. With 'AEOI' being endorsed by people with senior positions in the 'Group of 20' industrialised nations (actually only 19-strong), which (along with the G8) alternates with the OECD in the issuance of pronouncements of this kind, the forum's job is now to help members implement the standard effectively through training events, direct support to members and pilot projects with developing countries.

Drug money still finds its way from Europe through Western Africa and back to the source of the drugs in Colombia. The three new participants hardly have a financial services sector at all, but commodities such as diamonds that flow through the area need taxing and regulating.