The AfCFTA e-tariff book, launched in the end of July 2022 as a key tool for African States to begin trading under the AfCFTA rules, is a digital platform with updated information on tariff concessions that each AfCFTA State Party and Customs Union in Africa has accorded to goods imported from other AfCFTA State Parties. A user guide on how to use the manual has been made available on the e-tariff book website and can be accessed here.

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One of the main responsibilities of border regulatory agencies involved in cross-border trade transactions, and Customs in particular, is to expedite the supply of goods while ensuring compliance and safety. Among the tools that are mainly used to reconcile the functions of controlling the international movement of goods with the needs of trade facilitation, there are the risk profiling, scoring and management techniques: all activities that such agencies today usually conduct with the support of specific IT and data analysis systems. The reality, however, is that both Customs and the other regulatory agencies use data analysis almost exclusively for conducting risk management and risk scoring activities, while such techniques could be used also for facilitating trade, as explained in this article that we published a few years ago in the World Customs Journal. Another problem of risk analysis systems, especially in economies in transition, is that they are often not integrated with each other. Accordingly, risk analysis is normally conducted separately by each agency, without cooperative relationships among them, as joint risk analysis are quite rare.

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