AfCFTA Seeks Customs Digitisation To Double $220bn Africa’s Trade

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat has said it is banking on the mechanisation and digitisation of customs systems across the continent to double Africa’s $220 billion intra-African trade, as it signed a 20-year concession agreement to drive the process.

The agreement, signed between AfCFTA Holdings Limited, the AfCFTA Secretariat and AfriTrade CMP Limited, a subsidiary of Bergmans Security Consultant and Supplies Limited, covers the AfCFTA Customs Modernisation Project, which will see the deployment of digital technology to customs administrations across African countries.

The $3.1 billion concession agreement is aimed at accelerating intra-African trade, reducing border bottlenecks and improving revenue collection and comes weeks after both parties entered into a Memorandum of Understanding to collaborate on transforming customs operations across Africa.

Speaking at the signing ceremony in Abuja, late on Wednesday, the secretary-general of the AfCFTA Secretariat, Wamkele Mene, said intra-African trade had continued to grow steadily on the back of the AfCFTA, disclosing that the continent recorded $220 billion worth of intra-African trade in 2024, representing a 12.5 per cent increase from the previous year.

He, however, said this growth would not translate into the bloc’s full ambition unless customs systems across the continent were modernised, noting that many countries still relied on manual systems that slowed down trade and created room for revenue losses.

“The customs systems across the continent are not able to catch up with our ambition. It’s not sufficiently and adequately modernised,” Mene said.

He said the AfCFTA Secretariat’s target was to double intra-African trade by the year 2035, but warned that this would be difficult to achieve without a digital customs system capable of matching the bloc’s ambition.

“If we are not able to ensure that we have a customs system that is digital, that is able to express our ambition, I fear we will not succeed in doubling intra-Africa trade by the year 2035,” he said.

Mene explained that the trade rules underpinning the AfCFTA, including its annexes on transit, customs harmonisation and cooperation, as well as trade facilitation, were already in place. He said the real challenge was ensuring that these rules translated into practical benefits for African businesses, which was why the new agreement with Bergmans was so significant.

“There’s a very clear correlation between customs systems and the extent to which they are digitised and the success of doubling intra-Africa trade,” he said, describing the deal as the engine that would drive the practical implementation of the AfCFTA’s trade rules.

He cited the example of a truck moving between Cameroon and Nigeria, or between the Central African Republic and Chad, saying the new digital platform would enable customs authorities to track such movements in real time and provide governments with reliable data to guide fiscal policy decisions.

Speaking further, Mene said many African countries continued to experience revenue leakages, over-invoicing, under-invoicing and other problems linked to manual customs administration, describing it as a continent-wide challenge rather than one limited to any single country.

“It’s a general problem across the board, and I believe that is exactly why this technology is absolutely critical for the continent,” he said.

He disclosed that 50 member states of the African Union had already ratified the AfCFTA agreement, accepting the obligations that come with it, including the elimination of barriers to intra-African trade, investment and the movement of goods across the continent.

In his remarks, the chairman of Bergmans Security Consultant and Supplies Limited, Alhaji Saleh Ahmadu, said the agreement would drive customs operations across Africa toward advanced technological development, describing it as the fruition of years of work by his company.

He said Bergmans, through its subsidiary AfriTrade CMP Limited, was honoured to execute the agreement, and pledged the company’s commitment to providing the financing and technical expertise needed to enhance trade facilitation, open up investment opportunities and build capacity for sustainable growth across the continent.

Ahmadu said the technology to be deployed under the agreement had already proven successful in Nigeria, where it had increased revenue, removed bottlenecks in trade transactions and reduced clearance times, adding that Bergmans was committed to replicating the same results across the rest of Africa.

Responding to a question on when other countries could expect to see returns from the agreement, Mene said implementation would begin with pilot countries, but declined to give specific revenue projections, saying conditions would differ from country to country. He said the Secretariat would review progress with the pilot countries within one to two years and report back with data on the results achieved.