African governments themselves must step up to the plate and address these issues. They need to recognize the urgency of converting their country’s resource wealth into the human capital and investments in infrastructure on which sustained and inclusive growth depend. And they should follow the example of countries like Liberia and Guinea that are combating corruption by posting all mining contracts online for public scrutiny.

In other areas, action by African governments alone will not succeed. As we highlight in this year’s Africa Progress Report, no region has suffered more from tax evasion, aggressive tax planning and plunder of national wealth through offshore-registered companies. These are global problems that demand multilateral solutions.

The scale of the losses sustained by Africa is not widely recognized. Transfer pricing — the practice of shifting profits to lower tax jurisdictions — costs the continent $34 billion annually — more than the region receives in bilateral aid. Put differently, you could double aid by cutting this version of tax evasion. The extensive use made by foreign investors of offshore-registered companies operating from jurisdictions with minimal reporting requirements actively facilitates tax evasion. It is all but impossible for Africa’s understaffed and poorly resourced revenue authorities to track real profits through the maze of shell companies, holding companies and offshore entities used by investors.

There have been some encouraging recent developments in the multilateral response to these challenges. Under the Dodd-Frank Act in the United States and comparable measures in Europe, extractive companies are now required to meet higher standards of disclosure. (In what is surely an act of strategic folly, many of these companies are swimming against the tide of reform by mounting a legal challenge to the Dodd-Frank Act.) Meanwhile, the British government has taken the lead in putting international cooperation on taxation at the center of the agenda for next month’s Group of 8 summit.

This is an area in which the G-8 can make a real difference. The summit should serve as a launch-pad for the development of a rules-based global system on transparency and taxation.