Events

The Law, Technology, and Development Learning Circle brings together staff and students across the University of Warwick who are interested in the regulatory, governance, human rights, and political economy challenges of technology in/and on society. The group is coordinated by the Centre for Law, Regulation and Governance of the Global Economy (GLOBE), Warwick Law School and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (CIM) with the aim to create a space for sharing and discussing research and policy developments.

Through reading groups, events, and policy conversations the group aims to develop cross faculty collaborations that foreground Warwick’s law in context, and interdisciplinary research culture.

About the series​

Postgraduate and research students are invited to attend a series of lectures by distinguished international scholars, legal practitioners, and industry professionals.

The Politics of FATF Compliance: Lessons from Nigeria

Nkechikwu Azinge and Joy Malala

Drawing on our ESRC IAA project titled, “Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Greylisting: Lessons from Nigeria’ and ongoing research, we discuss the politics of FATF compliance. FATF, as a powerful standard setting body, exerts considerable transnational pressure on developing states through its greylisting mechanism shaping domestic legal and institutional priorities. Nigeria’s compliance is linked to its reputation management, access to global financial markets, foreign investments and development finance all which demand FATF compliance. Our findings reveal that compliance with FATF standards is predominantly strategic, creative and often performative oriented towards signalling credibility rather than addressing entrenched governance challenges. This significantly generates enforcement challenges including fragmented inter-agency arrangements often characterised by low trust and uneven capacity, selective enforcement which often disproportionately targets informal and low-level actors whilst entrenching limited accountability for powerful interests leaving significant capacity deficits across compliance agencies. Exiting the greylist is therefore understood as symbolic, as it generates a legitimacy feedback loop that temporarily restores market confidence while maintaining structural weaknesses.