The political will to build quality infrastructure at borders, including the construction of a single digitised checkpoint between two neighbouring countries, should facilitate the free movement of people and goods and help streamline cross-border trade in Africa, participants in the sixth edition of the Africa Resilience Forum (http://apo-opa.co/4mPrYfq), heard on Wednesday 1 October.
The discussion was the subject of a panel session “Regional Integration and Trade as Pathways to Peace”, held during the meeting which runs from 1 to 3 October 2025 in Abidjan.
“The ideal is to have a single border post between countries – if we were to have strong infrastructure like that, it would help facilitate trade,” said Mohammed Abdiker, Chief of Staff of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Abdiker pointed to political will as an essential condition for any potential achievements in this area. “We must all work together, advocating to our governments on the importance of the movement of goods and people for a more integrated management of our borders,” he urged. “Not only for customs duties, but also for science and technology.”
The International Organization for Migration had previously worked on a project for a single border post between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. Abdiker said: “It worked for a while. Now we have started another similar project with the African Development Bank between the Central African Republic and Cameroon, which is improving cross-border trade.”
In January 2021, the African Union launched the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to increase intra-African trade and stimulate inclusive and sustainable development in industry, infrastructure, and agriculture. By January 2025, 49 countries had ratified the agreement, creating a potential market of 1.3 billion people.
The African Development Bank Group actively supports this initiative by financing projects to establish single border posts, which are trade facilitation centres designed to simplify and speed up customs clearance and border control procedures between countries on the continent. The One Stop Border Post project has notably led to the establishment of a single control post between Tanzania and Kenya (http://apo-opa.co/4o9jyk5). In addition, the African Development Fund, the Bank Group’s concessional lending window, has contributed to the establishment of a juxtaposed checkpoint between Benin and Togo (http://apo-opa.co/4o8qMVx).
“As well as having a single border post at each of our borders, we will need to digitise border services,” noted Magdalene Dagoseh, Liberia’s Minister of Commerce and Industry. She added: “This is a solution for controlling not only the movement of people, but also commercial goods. By digitising the various border points, we can fight corruption – we know how many people have left or entered, and this prevents other problems.”
Ziad Hamoui, President of Borderless Alliance, an initiative launched in 2012 by West African private sector actors, called for the involvement of civil society in the design of public policies in order to find solutions to improve the movement of people and goods across borders. “There is formal trade, but also informal trade, not to mention illicit trade and smuggling,” he said. “Today, the volume of trade in the informal sector is higher than in the formal sector. So if you don’t know what’s going on at the borders, you won’t know how to manage it.”
The Africa Resilience Forum, organised every two years by the African Development Bank Group, brings together policymakers and practitioners from the humanitarian-development-peace nexus to explore strategies for scaling up prevention efforts and stimulating peace-building investments across the continent.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of African Development Bank Group (AfDB).
