Introducing the Firm

Project TERRA began from a question the investment case for data centres does not ask: who pays for the digital economy, and who is written out of the account. 

I designed the programme, secured its support from Luminate, and lead it from Nairobi with seven institutional partners.

The work is built around 

• Five interactive maps that follow the digital economy from the minerals it is made of to the cables crossing African waters and the tax incentives states grant to attract the facilities that use them. 
• Four studies and briefs put that mapping to the test in Kenya, Tanzania and Senegal, and in the platform economy where women's work generates revenue but leaves no fiscal record of the women themselves. 
• I built the first advanced course to treat algorithmic bias as a question of fiscal justice rather than technical performance, and 249 learners have enrolled on it.
• Out of that evidence I drafted the Dakar Principles, nineteen principles in five parts on the fiscal governance of data centres and digital infrastructure in Africa. They were discussed before the 14th Pan-African Conference on Illicit Financial Flows and Taxation in Dakar in October 2026, opening thereafter to consultation by any African state, institution or organisation that wishes to comment. 

Cents Governance Academy is the training and capacity building hub of Lai'Latif & Co Advocates. It teaches how fiscal power is created, exercised and held to account, with attention to the position of African states in a global system whose rules were largely written elsewhere. 

Our programmes range from 

• one day working labs and three day workshops to two week specialised trainings, and cover illicit financial flows, technology governance, red flags in government contracts and county finance. 

Participants, who include parliamentarians, policymakers, public officers, judges and revenue officials, work with real legal texts and contracts and practise reading, drafting and countering provisions. The two week training includes a study visit to a partner state, where participants see how another country has approached the same fiscal questions in its laws and administration. 

We also work with partner institutions in four ways: delivering training to their staff, collaborating so that they can deliver it in other jurisdictions, applying jointly for grant funding and undertaking public awareness work together. 

Sign language interpreters are part of our delivery team, materials are available in English and French, and we are preparing Braille versions for blind and partially sighted participants.