On 9 and 10 December 2024, Mxolisi Zondi and Vanessa Darsamo met officials from various government departments in Cabo Verde for a two-day meeting on tobacco and alcohol taxation. This mission follows a mission in February 2020, where the REEP team developed a Tobacco Excise Tax Simulation Model for Cabo Verde, and strongly encouraged the government to substantially increase the excise tax on cigarettes.

In November 2024, the Article 5.3 Knowledge Hub in Thailand hosted the seventh annual meeting of the WHO FCTC Knowledge Hubs, bringing together representatives from the nine knowledge hubs to strengthen global collaboration on tobacco control. The meeting focused on enhancing the capacity, efficiency, and reach of the knowledge hubs to support WHO FCTC Parties better.

In this newsletter, we report on  several meetings attended by REEP staff at the end of 2024. Zunda Chisha attended the annual meetings of the WHO FCTC Secretariat’s knowledge hubs in Thailand. Vanessa Darsamo and Mxolisi Zondi attended meetings in Cabo Verde, where they developed and tested a tax simulation model for tobacco and alcohol.

We are pleased to share this packed last newsletter of 2024. Many things have happened over the past two months. REEP staff attended global meetings and conferences, three papers were published, and REEP was reviewed by the University of Cape Town’s Research Committee. We also share news of the upcoming Tobacco Taxation 101 Course for 2025, and our usual contributions about the developments at the Tobacco Control Data Initiative, and Leoné’s report on global research outputs in the tobacco control space.