233. A multitude of international agreements and protocols aimed at simplifying and harmonizing trade and transport between States have been signed in Africa. Numerous bilateral agreements on international road transport have also been signed by several African countries.
234. In Central Africa, for example, several conventions governing international transport have been signed, including: an inter-State convention for the transport of miscellaneous goods by road, an inter-State convention on multimodal transport, an agreement for regulation of the transport of dangerous goods and an inter-State transit agreement. The CEMAC countries have adopted a community highway code and a civil aviation code, created an international commission for the Congo, Oubangui and Sangha basin and signed a protocol on maritime cooperation as well as an agreement on air transport between member States. An agreement on the preparation of a transport master plan, including transport facilitation, has also been adopted, and preparation of the master plan is at an advanced stage.
235. The CEMAC Trade Corridor Project approved by member States in 2006 aims to facilitate efficient regional trade among Cameroon, the Central African Republic and Chad and improve access to world trade. Financing for the project, which is being undertaken by CEMAC, has been secured from the World Bank ($201 million) and AfDB ($67 million), for which agreements were signed in 2007. There was also a plan for a $76 million loan agreement between AfDB and the Central African Republic.
236. To facilitate inter-State freight traffic, the Economic Community ofWest African States (ECOWAS) and the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) have adopted a convention on inter-State transport and another on inter-State road freight. These conventions, which have already taken effect, provide guidelines to be followed with regard to road transport services and allow uninterrupted transit across country boundaries.
237. As part of the transport facilitation effort, an initiative aimed at improving road transport governance has been launched in West Africa. A major component of the initiative is the preparation and dissemination of a quarterly report on "road corruption"
along three primary trade corridors: Tema-Ouagadougou, Ouagadougou-Bamako and Lome-Ouagadougou. The report is expected to help fight corruption in transport by providing timely information to decision makers and other stakeholders.
238. ECOWAS has also introduced a common vehicle insurance scheme using the Brown Card. It covers third-party liability and medical expenses. ECOWAS has also adopted the Automated System for Customs Data (ASYCUDA) as an application of e-commerce in overcoming delays in reporting traffic movements and locations.
ECOWAS and UEMOA are currently working on the establishment of joint border posts, which will address such issues as variations in working hours at adjacent border posts. They are also in the process of establishing corridor management committees and observatories for monitoring abnormal practices along major transport corridors.
239. In Southern Africa, efforts to improve trade facilitation include the launching of the Regional Trade Facilitation Programme (RTFP), a key component of which is the one-stop border post. This involves measures such as the harmonization of customs
51
clearance procedures at border crossing points. A pilot one-stop border post has been put in place at Chirundu border post between Zambia and Zimbabwe, with others to follow. Another in Eastern Africa aimed at improving the efficiency of rail traffic between Kenya and Uganda has been established at Malaba.19
240. In the Eastern and Southern Africa subregions, COMESA and SADC have taken a number of steps to facilitate transport between their member States. At its twelfth summit, held in Nairobi in May 2007, the COMESA Authority urged COMESA member States to implement the trade and transit facilitation instruments approved at earlier summits.
241. At the bilateral level, agreements have been signed between countries to promote transport facilitation. Rwanda and Uganda, for example, recently agreed to extend working hours at their border post to 10 p.m. A recent conference in Kampala with the theme "Seamless transport services" focused on the reduction of non-tariff barriers between the port of Mombasa and the landlocked neighbouring countries.
Subsequently, the Kenyan Government decided to convert Mombasa port to 24-hour working.
242. Mombasa is of critical importance to Uganda, as 70 per cent of its traffic is made up of Uganda's trade, the rest being trade to and from Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda. For a number of reasons, mainly the lack of capacity on the part of the East African railway companies, which carry most of the cargo from Mombasa, the port suffers from serious congestion. As many as 14,000 containers can be seen at the port at any one time, whereas its true capacity is only
8,500.
243. In an effort to further reduce non-tariff barriers, the Kenyan Government has decided to open border posts to neighbouring landlocked countries for 24 hours every day, which is an enormous improvement from the past practice of an eight-hour working day. There are also plans to reduce the number of roadblocks between Kenya and Uganda on its Northern Corridor (which comprises a rail and road network linking Kenya to the Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, southern Sudan and Uganda) from the current 47 to 17.
244. In a similar move aimed at improving transport and trade facilitation, a corridor management mechanism for the Central Corridor linking the countries of the Great Lakes region to the port of Dar es-Salaam was put in place in 2005. At that time, preparations were under way to establish corridor management groups for the North-South Corridor, linking Botswana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe to Durban as well as the Bamako-Ouagadougou-Tema and Niamey-Ouagadougou-Lome Corridors.
19 Infrastructure Consortium for Africa, Annual Report, 2007.
245. Following the implementation of the corridor management initiative, important results have been achieved. The journey time from Mombasa to Kampala for example, fell from 10 to 6 days.
246. To ensure that countries which have not taken such measures move quickly to adopt regional best practices, all regional economic communities have taken steps to promote decisions limiting road checkpoints and are calling on all States to remove control posts.
247. Burkina Faso and Ghana are taking the lead in adopting pragmatic measures to reduce trade barriers, including the creation of enhanced understanding of the key constraints to transport movement and the increasing adoption of measures to remove barriers.
248. The above efforts are supported by Africa's international development partners.
As part of the initiative taken by the United Nations Secretary-General to refocus attention on achievement of the MDGs, the United Nations has established the MDG Africa Working Group, which is composed of thematic groups, including one on infrastructure and trade facilitation. To make its work effective, AfDB, the European Commission, the World Bank and the secretariat of the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa have been supporting the thematic group.
249. In 2003 the Almaty Programme of Action, addressing the special needs of landlocked developing countries within a new global framework for transit transport cooperation for landlocked and transit developing countries, was launched by the United Nations General Assembly. As a follow-up to this international initiative, African governments have developed an African programme of action, focusing on the development of major transit corridors that were selected at a preparatory meeting on the Almaty Programme, held in May 2003 in Addis Ababa. An African review meeting was held in June 2008 to assess progress made in establishing efficient transit transport systems on the continent and agree on what needed to be done to further galvanize global partnerships to assist African landlocked and transit developing countries, in order to effectively implement the Almaty Programme of Action.
250. A number of initiatives aimed at improving the performance of regional transport corridors have also been pursued in collaboration with SSATP. Under the NEPAD medium-and-long-term strategic framework, SSATP has taken a coordinating role in trade and transport facilitation activities, using the Technical Coordinating Committee of the regional economic communities. Much of the efforts of these communities are focused on removal of non-physical barriers to transport along major corridors, especially those connecting landlocked countries to seaports.
251. In line with this, SSATP is currently the principal advocate for eliminating physical and non-physical barriers to the smooth flow of passengers and freight across borders. Its contributions SSATP also include funding the transport facilitation activities of the regional economic communities, such as the establishment of transport
corridor performance monitoring mechanisms (observatories); port security audits;
harmonization of legal/regulatory arrangements at border posts; and establishment of one-stop border posts.