This study sheds light on the potential of personal income tax (PIT) to address inequality in African countries. We employ new data on PIT design and reforms from the TaxDev Employment Income Taxes Dataset (EITD) alongside data on pre-tax income distributions from the World Inequality Database (WID) to model the redistributive capacity of PIT regimes in African countries, and the extent to which reforms to these regimes between 1995 and 2020 have affected this potential.