The Causes and Effects of Poor Customs Administration on the Successful Implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA): The Need to Digitalise Customs Procedures in Africa

Customs play a significant role in trade. They ensure that domestic trade laws are complied with and implement controls that secure revenue. Nonetheless, many African countries are notoriously known to have bad customs environments. Their borders are gridlocked with manual customs operations which consequently induce time delays at borders, customs offices charging excessive customs fees, goods being in transit for long durations, and unscrupulous payments received by people tasked with regulating customs operations and measures at border crossings. As a result, Africa is considered one of the most expensive continents to trade in and with. The excessive administration at borders, police roadblocks, and checkpoints are considerable barriers that make it difficult to trade within and outside the continent. The effectiveness and coherence of custom measures have a significant influence on the growth of trade in the continent, and the advancement of the African marketplace. It is then the purpose of this chapter to investigate the effects of the continent’s poor custom efficiency on the realisation of the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement and to show the need to digitalise custom procedures and ensure better enforcement of customs laws, as means of improving the custom inefficiencies in Africa.