An ECA Hub team comprising Graham Johnson, Njoki Mungai and Athman Mohamed participated in meetings held at the TTCA offices and attended by Berhane Giday and Sherin Shoukry from COMESA, Eliombo Lisumbu, Venant Ntahonsigaye and Jean Kizito Kabanguka from the TTCA, Stephanie Wilcock and Nzuki Mwania from USAID/East Africa, on the overall status of the RCTG, and the pilot to test the system in two or three countries using actual goods in transit.

It was agreed that the Hub would conduct training on the RCTG-MIS for COMESA in March and also be involved in the training of revenue authorities to facilitate the pilot of the RCTG-MIS. COMESA and TTCA will head the pilot in 3 countries, and where possible, the Hub will offer assistance, especially on technical matters in order to aid in the process of implementing the bond scheme.

USAID pointed out that IT connectivity was essential and that COMESA should carry out an IT survey of all Revenue Authorities to ensure adequate connectivity was available. This would include recommendations as to where the VSATS would need to be installed to ensure the establishment of the Customs Authorities IT highways.

Edward Ichungwa, IT Specialist

Athman Mohamed, IT Specialist

Michael Smith, IT Consultant

Athman Mohamed training COMESA RCTG-MIS Consultant

The ECA Hub held meetings at the COMESA headquarters in Lusaka Zambia to hand over the Regional Customs Transit Guarantee-Management Information System. The ECA Hub team comprising IT specialists Athman Mohammed, Edward Ichung'wa, Michael Smith and Public Relations Assistant Njoki Mungai, worked on content provided by COMESA and uploaded the same into the MIS. The entire system, developed by the ECA Hub in close collaboration with COMESA, has been fully deployed on a COMESA Computer and is the first step towards preparing for the pilot of the RCTG along the Northern Corridor route.

Edward Ichung'wa presented the workings of the Information Dissemination Module - the MIS Website, its overview, application, available functions such as newsletters, reports and events, settings and configurations with emphasis on the back end content management system.

Athman Mohammed's in-depth and step by step presentation focused on the mechanization and workings of the MIS. This covered information access, the log in process, differences in the types of stakeholders that will use the systems (principals, national sureties, customs etc) and how each user accesses different information depending on the authorization they have.

He also discussed Carnet tracking and authentication, claims processing and their authorization for payment and how the entire process can be tracked, from the country of commencement to the country of destination, through the system.

Michael Smith tied it all up with a presentation on RADDEx and how this Hub developed Customs Systems Interface can be used, by customs, directly with RCTG-MIS to convey and transfer information on goods in transit as it takes into consideration different customs systems. The RADDEx interface, which is already in use in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda, may be extended to Congo and Burundi, an achievement that will impact the COMESA Bond Scheme positively when it is implemented.

The RCTG-MIS handover to COMESA was finalized with collection of content and uploading the same into the deployed ID Module; User Training manual for the Technical IT system developed and handed over to content manager; Administrator and user training completed.

The ECA Hub and COMESA IT teams will continue to work closely to finalize the details of the IT Technical aspects of the deployment guideline for the pilot project implementation on the Northern Corridor.

Athman Mohamed, IT Specialist

Michael Smith, IT Consultant

The ECA Hub made presentations on the RCTG-MIS and RADDEx Information Technology initiatives to representatives from the Revenue Authorities of Rwanda and Tanzania, the Director General and Director of Customs at the East African Community Secretariat (EAC) and members of staff of the newly formed customs division in the EAC Secretariat. Athman Mohamed and Michael Smith, the Hub's IT specialists, made presentations at the EAC detailing the workings of the Bond scheme management system and RADDEx respectively.

Discussion at the meeting acknowledged that the ECA Hub's activities were well linked within the EAC program activities in the customs component. The Rwanda team outlined the implementation of RADDEx that it had undertaken and Tanzania Revenue expressed interest in implementing the interface.