Brazzaville Bets on Regional Trade
Brazzaville – In a move seen by traders as a potential turning point for Central Africa’s logistics bottlenecks, the African Export-Import Bank has appointed the Business Facilities Corporation Group as the exclusive local agent for its Africa Trade Gateway digital platform in the six-nation CEMAC bloc.
A Digital Leap to Cut CEMAC Trade Costs
Announced on November 25, 2025, this open-ended mandate places the Congolese-origin project developer at the center of a platform promising simplified customs, transparent payments, and real-time cargo tracking – persistent friction points that currently inflate regional logistics bills and erode the competitiveness of small exporters.
An innovation analyst estimates this partnership could unlock an “interconnected and competitive business community capable of lifting intra-African trade well beyond its current 15% share of continental commerce,” provided local businesses adopt the technology at scale and border administrations follow suit.
Importers in Congo and neighboring countries often cite multiple checkpoints, paper manifests, and inconsistent valuation rules as reasons trucks crawl between Douala, Brazzaville, Libreville, and Bangui. By routing transactions through a single digital window, ATG aims to cut customs clearance times by several days and reduce informal fees.
Inside the Africa Trade Gateway Toolbox
Launched by Afreximbank in 2023, the platform bundles six services under one login: cross-border payment settlement, regulatory compliance checks, end-to-end shipment visibility, a business-to-business marketplace, a secure networking layer, and direct access to the Bank’s tailored financing instruments.
Crucially, the platform integrates with the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, allowing a buyer based in Brazzaville to pay a supplier in Malabo in local currency while Afreximbank handles foreign exchange clearing in the background, shielding small businesses from exchange rate fluctuations and enabling predictable cash flow planning.
Compliance modules draw on continental and national databases to perform automatic sanctions screening and product standards verification. According to Afreximbank developers, these checks take minutes instead of days, reducing the scope for manual discretion that traders say often leads to arbitrary penalties at local border posts.
What BFC Group Must Deliver
Under the agreement, BFC Group will mobilize chambers of commerce, freight forwarder unions, and port authorities in the six capitals, train focal points, and translate the interface into French, Spanish, and major local languages. Its teams will also gather user feedback for monthly updates to Afreximbank developers.
The firm’s logistics expertise stems from railway rehabilitation projects and inland dry port design. Its executives say this on-the-ground experience will help map cargo flows and identify where digital checkpoints can replace costly weighbridges or paper customs buffers without disrupting revenue collection for customs administrations.
Beyond technical tasks, BFC Group must run a sustained awareness campaign. Billboards in Pointe-Noire, webinars for startups in Yaoundé, and roadshows along the Douala-Ndjamena corridor are planned to demonstrate tangible savings and reassure family-run businesses hesitant to migrate sensitive data to cloud servers beyond national borders.
Regional Reaction and Early Expectations
In Brazzaville, the Chamber of Commerce welcomed the news, calling it “further proof that Congo can be a digital hub for Central Africa.” Port of Pointe-Noire officials said smoother documentation could attract additional feeder lines seeking alternatives to congested Gulf of Guinea terminals in the future.
Cameroon’s shippers’ council was cautiously optimistic, noting that previous single-window projects faltered once grant funding dried up. An executive said the open-ended nature of BFC’s mandate and Afreximbank’s balance sheet backing “change the risk calculus” but urged authorities to harmonize data standards across CEMAC customs codes without further delay.
Bankers in Libreville believe digitized documentation could unlock structured trade finance products for timber and cocoa exporters who currently struggle to present uniform paperwork. They stress, however, that smallholder cooperatives will need affordable integration, or the platform risks only serving firms already familiar with electronic platforms today.
Economic analysts in the region argue this initiative aligns with the African Continental Free Trade Area timetable, which calls for the full elimination of tariffs on 90% of goods by 2030. A functional digital infrastructure now, they say, will avoid a last-minute scramble to reinvent processes from scratch later.
Implications for Congo’s Economic Agenda
For Congo-Brazzaville, smoother transit could bolster its ambition to position Pointe-Noire as the Atlantic gateway for landlocked Chad and the Central African Republic. Faster border procedures align with government plans to attract investors in light manufacturing seeking to shorten the time-to-market between factories and growing urban consumer bases in the region.
The Presidency’s Special Advisor for the Digital Economy praised Afreximbank for “matching rhetoric with resources.” He added that Congo’s ongoing fiber-optic backbone rollout gives the country a head start in hosting mirror servers once traffic increases, ensuring data sovereignty remains within CEMAC jurisdictions for years to come.
While the full deployment timeline is still being finalized, stakeholders appear to agree on one principle: the digital platform only succeeds if traders actually log on. Over the coming quarters, adoption rates, rather than press releases, will reveal whether CEMAC’s trade modernization has finally taken off.