What ITS is and why it exists
ITS, the AfCFTA Integrated Transit System, is the continental record of goods in transit across Africa. One electronic transit declaration follows a consignment from the office where it is lodged, through every border it crosses, to the office where the transit is closed.
It exists because a lorry crossing four countries used to need four sets of paper, re-entered at every border. Under the African Continental Free Trade Area, the declaration is lodged once. Each customs administration on the way reads the same signed record and adds its own stamps to it, instead of starting again.
What ITS is for
ITS has four jobs.
- Keep one record per consignment. A declaration gets one serial number when it is lodged. Everything that happens to it afterwards, each stamp at each border, each correction, is added to that record as a new version. Nothing is overwritten.
- Tell the corridor. When something happens to a declaration, ITS announces it to the administrations that need to know: the departure country, every country that has stamped it, the country named as next, and the destination. Nobody else is told.
- Let anyone check the paper. The printed Transit Document carries a QR code and a verification code. Anyone can scan or type it and learn whether the document is genuine and still in force.
- Show what is happening. The Secretariat, each State Party and each REC can see the declarations in their scope, follow them, and read volumes, delays and refusals.
What ITS does not do
This is the part newcomers most often get wrong.
- ITS does not lodge or stamp anything in the portal. Declarations are lodged, stamped and amended by each administration's own customs system, which talks to ITS directly. The portal is for finding, reading, following and printing them. See Who uses ITS.
- ITS does not plan the route. Nobody declares the whole route in advance. Each country names only the next country, on its own exit stamp. The route you see is worked out from the stamps received. See How ITS works.
- ITS does not hold the guarantee. The guarantee (the bond that covers duties if the goods go missing) is issued and checked by a guarantee platform in the departure country. ITS asks that platform and shows the answer.
- ITS does not track lorries itself. Where a consignment has an electronic seal, ITS asks the seal platform for the latest position when you open the page, shows it, and keeps nothing. The stamp trail is the record, not the position.
- ITS does not keep the supporting documents. It keeps a fingerprint (digest) of each attached file. The file stays with the administration that filed it.
- ITS does not keep the printed form. The Transit Document is drawn fresh from the signed record every time somebody asks for it.
Because ITS relies on other systems for the guarantee, the seal position and the documents, some things you see are only as good as the answer those systems gave. A guarantee reading Could not be checked or a position reading Position unavailable is a statement about that system, not about the goods.
What you get from it
| If you are… | The portal gives you… |
|---|---|
| The Secretariat | Every declaration on the continent, the analytics and reports for all of Africa, the governance register of State Parties and RECs, and every refusal |
| A State Party | The declarations touching your territory, your country's figures, your customs offices and your own users |
| A REC | The same, for the member states you administer |
| A roadside officer, a declarant or a consignee | Two public pages: one to check a document is genuine, one to see where a consignment has reached |
Where to go next
- How ITS works: follow one declaration from lodging to discharge.
- Who uses ITS: the people and systems involved, and which part of the portal each one uses.
- Key concepts: the vocabulary, in plain words.