Who uses ITS
What you can see and do in ITS depends on two things: the organisation you sign in for, and the permissions your account holds. The organisation decides your scope, meaning which declarations and figures you see. The permissions decide which screens and buttons you get. If a tab or a button in this manual is missing from your screen, your account does not include it. That is normal, not a fault.
The five kinds of user
| Who | What they do with ITS | Where they work |
|---|---|---|
| The AfCFTA Secretariat | Governs the system: admits State Parties and RECs, watches volumes, delays and refusals across the continent | The portal, with the whole of Africa in scope |
| A State Party (a national customs administration) | Connects its customs system, follows the declarations touching its territory, keeps its customs offices and users up to date | The portal, scoped to its own country, and its own customs system |
| A REC (a Regional Economic Community, such as IGAD or SADC) | Does the same for the member states it administers | The portal, scoped to its members |
| Customs officers | Lodge declarations and stamp them at the border | Their own national customs system, never this portal |
| The public (roadside officers, declarants, consignees, transporters) | Check that a printed document is genuine, or see where a consignment has reached | The two public pages, with no account |
The day, user by user
The Secretariat's day. Sign in and open Overview for the continent's figures: how many declarations were registered and discharged this month, the median time at the border, how many are overdue. Check Failed transmissions for refusals, and the bell for anything needing attention. Look up a declaration someone has asked about. Occasionally, maintain the governance register and the Secretariat's own users. See Oversee the continent as the Secretariat.
A State Party's day. Sign in and read the notifications: declarations touching your territory, refusals of your system's calls, register corrections you can make. Open Declarations to find the consignments on their way to your frontier and read where each one is. Keep your customs offices and your users current. See Start your day as a State Party.
A REC's day. The same as a State Party's, for the members you administer. The Overview and the reports let you choose one member or the whole community. See Compare your members as a REC.
A customs officer's day. Lodging and stamping happen in the officer's own national system. That system sends the declaration or the stamp to ITS, and ITS records it and tells the corridor. An officer who opens the portal can read a declaration, but cannot stamp it there.
The public. A roadside officer stops a lorry and scans the QR code on its Transit Document; the Verify page says whether the document is genuine. A declarant or a consignee types the serial number and their TIN on the Track page to see where the consignment has reached.
What you see depends on who you are
| Screen | Secretariat | State Party | REC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overview (analytics) | All of Africa | Your country | Your community, or one member |
| Declarations | Every declaration | Those touching your country | Those touching your members |
| Failed transmissions | Every organisation's refusals | Your own | Your own |
| Notifications | Notices addressed to the Secretariat | Notices addressed to your administration | Notices addressed to your administration |
| Governance | Yes | No | No |
| Customs offices | All of Africa | Yours to maintain, others to read | Your members' to maintain, others to read |
| Help in the header | No | Yes | Yes |
What each role can do has the full screen-by-screen and button-by-button table.
Nobody lodges or stamps in the portal
ITS is system-to-system for now. A declaration reaches ITS from the departure country's customs system, and every stamp from the customs system of the country that cut it. None of the accounts in this manual, the Secretariat's included, lodges, stamps, amends or cancels a declaration in the portal.
You may come across a page that looks like a declaration form, reached by typing an address. It is not how declarations are lodged. Lodging is done by your customs system. See Declarations and, for the integrator's view, Lifecycle and stamps.
Who else is involved, outside the portal
- National customs systems, which lodge, stamp and amend declarations and receive ITS's announcements. They are connected by their administration's technical team, following the Get started section and the Guides.
- Guarantee platforms, which issue and check the guarantee on each declaration. ITS asks them and shows the answer.
- Electronic seal platforms, which report where a sealed consignment is. ITS relays the answer and keeps nothing.
- Onboarding. An administration moves from admission, through the sandbox, to production in the System integration workspace. A separate onboarding guide will describe it.