Compared to other continents, Africa has a very limited and underdeveloped railway network. A paper published by Tralac in September 2023 noted that the majority of railways (with a few exceptions), provides mainly links between coastal seaports and inland destinations, while those offering an interconnection between African states are very few. The paper also noted that even currently, 16 countries out of 54 African States in Africa still do not have railways. In addition, as many of them were built during the colonial period, these railways have aged significantly, because of years of underinvestment and lack of maintenance mainly due to a lack of consistent funding dedicated to these operations. As a result, road transport has become the dominant mode of transport in the continent, leading to congestion, accidents, and increased reliance on fuel imports. The African Development Bank calculates that road transport currently carries 80 percent of goods and 90 percent of passenger traffic, noting that the overreliance on road transport increases the cost of transporting goods, making African products less competitive in global markets.

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The Abuja Treaty (1991) for the establishment of the African Economic Community recognizes the cooperation between African customs administrations as a key element for the correct functioning of the future Community, calling (Art. 39) for the development of a Protocol to define criteria and modalities for such cooperation. Despite this Protocol was never adopted, in 2004 the African Union decided to create a sub-committee of Directors General of Customs as a mechanism to facilitate the coordination among customs services in the continent. The creation of this committee was anticipated by a meeting of the Directors General of Customs of the AU member states held in 2003 in Johannesburg as part of the "All Africa Customs Conference" (AACC), in which for the first time discussions were held on how to improve cooperation practices among African Customs as part of advancing the continent’s economic integration process.

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