Countries across Eastern and Southern Africa are being challenged to shift their approach to combating money laundering from simply meeting regulatory requirements to producing measurable results in the fight against financial crime.
The call was made during the 2026 Annual Meetings of the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG), which have brought together representatives from 22 member states alongside international institutions, including the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The meeting is focusing on how countries can strengthen their financial intelligence systems, improve cooperation across borders and ensure that criminals are prevented from benefiting from proceeds of crime.
Rwanda’s central bank Deputy Governor, Nick Barigye, said the effectiveness of anti-money laundering systems should not be judged by the number of laws passed or institutions established, but by the results those systems deliver.
“The real test is whether we are disrupting illicit financial flows, recovering criminal assets and dismantling the networks that facilitate financial crime.”
Barigye stressed that financial criminals increasingly operate across jurisdictions, making cooperation between countries essential to following the movement of illicit money.
He called for stronger mechanisms for exchanging financial intelligence and other investigative information, particularly where criminal proceeds are moved through several countries to conceal their origins.
The challenge remains significant across the region.
Data from Rwanda’s Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) shows that between 2019 and 2024, fraud, embezzlement, human trafficking, illegal foreign exchange activities and tax evasion featured among the economic and financial crimes most frequently reported.
Such crimes can generate substantial proceeds that are subsequently moved through banks, businesses, real estate and other financial channels in an attempt to disguise their source.
Officials at the meetings said identifying the movement of money is only part of the challenge.
Authorities must also establish who ultimately owns or controls companies and other legal entities used to move or conceal illicit funds.
This has placed renewed emphasis on beneficial ownership information data that reveals the individuals who ultimately own or control a company, even where ownership is hidden behind layers of corporate structures.
Participants argued that accurate and accessible beneficial ownership information can help investigators connect suspicious transactions to the individuals and networks behind them.
Another major concern is the speed at which information is exchanged between authorities.
Delays in sharing intelligence can give criminals time to move assets beyond the reach of investigators.
Officials therefore called for closer collaboration between financial intelligence units, law-enforcement agencies, regulators, tax authorities and their counterparts in other countries.
The discussions also highlighted the need to ensure that recovered criminal assets become a measurable part of the region’s anti-money laundering success.
Rather than focusing primarily on technical compliance, countries are being encouraged to demonstrate whether investigations lead to prosecutions, illicit assets are identified and recovered, and criminal networks are effectively disrupted.
The 2026 ESAAMLG meetings therefore come at a time when regional authorities are seeking to make financial crime increasingly difficult to hide behind borders, companies and complex financial transactions.
For the region, the message is clear: having the rules is no longer enough the real measure of success is whether those rules can follow the money and take the profit out of crime.
