Brahima Cisse POLICY SEMINAR Virtual Event - Informal African trade: The hidden world of food flows DEC 3, 2020 - 09:30 AM TO 10:45 AM EST

1. Brahima CISSE
Agricultural Intra-regional trade and transport
brahima.cisse@cilss.int ; cissebra@gmail.com
West Africa Informal Cross Border Trade
monitoring
ACTOAH
WACTAF
Implementation partner
West African Association for Cross-Border Trade, in Agro-forestry-pastoral, Fisheries
products and Food (WACTAF) - aoctah.wactaf@gmail.com

2. METHODOLOGY
 Selection of a partner value chain regional organization
(WACTAF)
 Training of data collectors and a focal points
(supervisors) within private value chain selected
organization
 Data collection points at strategic markets and borders
 Use of Smartphones for Day-to-Day cross border trade
flows data collection (www.eco-icbt.org)
 Each product is HS2012 coded
 Value and volume of each flow
 Field supervision and validation mission

3. PROGRESS
 Fifteen (15) ECOWAS member States National Statistic Offices (NSO)
adopted the methodology in 2019
 NSO extract data from the plateform ECO-ICBT to top up the
customs data
 Strong partnership with IFPRI throughout the process
 Setting up a joint technical secretariat on ICBT in West Africa
 Building capacity of AOCTAH-WACTAF to partly support ICBT data
collection – Sustainability
 IFPRI is working on the analysis and documentation of the trade and
red tape database on cross-border trade of agricultural commodities
in West Africa along the 12 corridors – USAID and IFAD funding
 WACTAF-ITC started development of Simplified Trade Regime (STR)
to formalize and improve the performance of the small scale cross
border traders and enable them to benefit from the regional
preferential treatment when importing or exporting goods within
the region – Better

4. Lessons learned
 Unique day to day ICBT monitoring system along the
major corridors in West Africa, based on private setor
 Integration of ICBT data in official foreign trade
statistics and better measurement of regional
integration
 Need to have strong partnerships between private
value chain organization (WACTAF) and Technical and
Financial Partners - Sustainability.

5. CUREENT SOURCES OF FUNDINGS
From oct 2009 to june 2019
Since June 2020
FAMILY FARMING, REGIONAL MARKETS AND CROSS BORDER TRADE
CORRIDORS IN THE SAHEL (FARM-TRAC)
-----------------------------------------
AGRICULTURE FAMILIALE, MARCHES REGIONAUX ET CORRIDORS COMMERCIAUX
TRANSFRONTALIERS AU SAHEL (FARM-TRAC)

6. MERCI POUR VOTRE ATTENTION
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION
ECO-ICBT
www.eco-icbt.org
ACTOAH
WACTAF