Southern and east African countries lose billions of dollars every year to drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and mineral smuggling, severely hampering development, an expert said on Friday.
A lack of data makes it difficult to quantify exactly how much is lost, said Charles Goredema, senior research fellow at the influential Institute for Security Studies in South Africa.
"In South Africa alone, 80 million rand ($11.9 million) is lost annually so we are talking in the multibillion-dollar range being lost in the region every year," he said in an interview with Reuters.
More than 500 million people live in southern and eastern Africa - which comprise more than half of the continent's 53 countries - and the majority live on less than a dollar a day.
Though both regions are relatively stable, grinding poverty and weak policing create an environment in which crime flourishes.
"The loss of money through these crimes is a serious issue for the region because the money is lost by countries which can least afford to be without those kinds of resources," he said.
Goredema says the smuggling of gold and diamonds means tax is not being paid, resulting in revenue losses for governments to fund health, housing and education.
Analysts say criminal activity, like armed robbery and car theft, increases the cost of securing and insuring property, adversely impacting economies where social services are not well developed.
Although the extent of revenue loss and crime types varies across the region, Goredema says countries like Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) face the biggest problem with the smuggling of gold and platinum. Others lose money to diamond, cobalt and zinc smuggling, he said.
Recent seizures of several tonnes of narcotics worth millions of dollars in Kenya and South Africa show that Africa is increasingly becoming a hub for drug trafficking.
Mauritius, Botswana and South Africa have the best laws in the region to tackle financial crimes and smuggling, but many other are lacking such laws and sometimes, even the agencies to enforce them.
And those that have agencies often find that they have no backing from their governments, leading to ineffectiveness, he said.
The problem is especially acute with anti-corruption bodies, which have to depend on the very governments they investigate for funding, leaving them open to sabotage.
"And then there is the whole question of autonomy, most anti-corruption agencies are not independent," he said.