Completion of ECOWAS Joint Border Posts

Construction of JBPs completed

The ECOWAS Commission, with support funds from the European Union 9th and 10th European Development Funds (EDF) programme, successfully completed the construction of two joint Border posts (JBPs) at  Sèmè-Kraké (Benin/Nigeria) and Noepé Akanu (Ghana/Togo). In an effort to operationalize the Sèmè-Kraké and Noepé Akanu JBPs and facilitate the joint management of the two border posts, the EU Commission has reiterated its support to the two JBPs through the Transport Facilitation Project (TFP II) funded by the European Union and implemented by NTU International A/S with resources from the 10th European Development Fund.

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NTU's West Africa team visits our two ECOWAS projects

Completion of workshops

Among the component activities to compliment the effective operationalization of the two Joint Border Posts at Noepe (the border between Ghana and Togo) and at Seme-Krake (the Border between Nigeria and Benin), the Department of Infrastructure with Technical Assistance (TA) support, initiated an Interdepartmental Committee to jointly work towards a comprehensive operationalization of the JBPs. Its operationalization requires the joint efforts and involvement of services such as Trade, Customs, Immigration (Free movement) and ICT. In addition, one of the components of the project is the installation of ICT equipment, systems, processes and JBPs infrastructure.

In view of this, two workshops have been carried out from the 11th to the 13th of March 2020:

  • Workshop on Operations Procedure Workgroup - monitoring tools in Lome, Togo (approx. 70 participants, comprising of the Infrastructure and ICT department Focal persons from ECOWAS as well as Member States ) – purpose of the workshop was to review and validate the proposed JBPS monitoring tools which can assist in future monitoring activities and missions at the JBP.
  • Workshop on ICT Interconnectivity Workgroup - ToRs and Workplan at Lome, Togo (approx. 52 participants, comprising of ICT experts from various government agencies involved in border clearance of person and goods and the Commission ICT department) - objective of the workshop was to validate the ICT workgroup on TORs and to develop a detailed ICT work group work plan in order to facilitate the activities planned under the ICT component of the TFP II TA project.

Both workshops were successfully carried out and served as a good platform to validate the work which has been done up to date as well as discuss the way forward with the remaining deliverables under the ICT component of the TA project.