{"id":41763,"date":"2026-08-06T18:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T16:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=41763"},"modified":"2026-08-06T18:40:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T16:40:24","slug":"african-free-trade-agency-taps-nigerian-firm-for-3-1-billion-customs-overhaul-project","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/african-free-trade-agency-taps-nigerian-firm-for-3-1-billion-customs-overhaul-project\/","title":{"rendered":"African free trade agency taps Nigerian firm for $3.1 bln customs overhaul project"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat has signed a 20-year, $3.1 billion concession agreement with Nigeria&#8217;s \u200cBergmans 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.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The agreement, signed in Abuja \u2060late 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.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>AfCFTA Secretary-General Wamkele Mene said manual customs systems contribute to corruption, revenue leakages, under-invoicing and over-invoicing.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Mene said 50 \u200cAfrican \u2060Union member states have ratified the AfCFTA agreement and intra-African trade rose to $220 billion in 2024, up 12.5% year-on-year.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The customs modernisation project is designed to \u2060support AfCFTA&#8217;s target of doubling intra-African trade by 2035 through harmonised procedures, data collection and real-time cargo tracking.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Bergmans \u2060said it would implement the project through its subsidiary AfriTrade CMP Ltd, leveraging experience \u2060from Nigeria&#8217;s customs modernisation project, which Mene said helped lift customs revenue by 90.4%.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":41764,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-41763","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"AfCFTA partners with Bergmans in $3.1 billion deal to digitise continental customs","published_date":"2026-08-06 18:02:53","news_description":"AfCFTA partners with Bergmans in $3.1 billion deal to digitise continental customs","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/41763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/41763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41770,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/41763\/revisions\/41770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=41763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}