African free trade agency taps Nigerian firm for $3.1bn customs overhaul project

The African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat has signed a 20-year, $3.1 billion concession agreement with Nigeria’s ‌Bergmans Security Consultants and Supplies Ltd to roll out a continent-wide customs system to boost intra-African trade and curb revenue leakages across 50 member countries.

The agreement, signed in Abuja late on Wednesday, will see Bergmans fund and deploy the AfCFTA customs modernisation project to digitise customs processes, standardise cross-border procedures and provide real-time tracking of goods across the continent.

AfCFTA Secretary-General Wamkele Mene said manual customs systems contribute to corruption, revenue leakages, under-invoicing and over-invoicing.

Mene said 50 ‌African Union member states have ratified the AfCFTA agreement and intra-African trade rose to $220 billion in 2024, up 12.5% year-on-year.

The customs modernisation project is designed to support AfCFTA’s target of doubling intra-African trade by 2035 through harmonised procedures, data collection and real-time cargo tracking.

Bergmans said it would implement the project through its subsidiary AfriTrade CMP Ltd, leveraging experience from Nigeria’s customs modernisation project, which Mene said helped lift customs revenue by 90.4%.