The WCO Regional Workshop for the East South Africa (ESA) region on “Coordinated Border Management with a special focus on One Stop Border Posts in Single Window Environments” was held from 23 to 27 July 2018.

The WCO ESA region has 22 Members, many of which have a long-standing experience of establishing One Stop Border Posts (OSBPs).  In addition, there have been many projects in recent years to build a Single Window environment.  At least one third of ESA Members are at various stages of Single Window implementation, whilst others have started feasibility studies on implementing a Single Window environment.

The Workshop further enhanced the understanding of the role of OSBPs in a Single Window environment, of the respective features of the two, and of the interrelation between them, to facilitate the cross-border movement of goods and people in the ESA region.  Participants had the opportunity to visit an example of best practice in the region, the Busia One Stop Border Post, which is on the border between Uganda and Kenya.  The field trip experience and the experiences of Members from the region were used as the basis for organizing several activities.  These drew on case studies from ESA and other WCO regions, and focused mainly on business process analysis and business process re-engineering for the exchange of information between Customs, CBRAs and other stakeholders in a Single Window environment, and OSBPs.

The importance of international standards and instruments, such as the WCO Data Model and Revised Kyoto Convention, was also highlighted with regards to the semantic interoperability and co-orchestration of business processes in the interfaced and hybrid Single Window models, and on the more specific scale of OSBPs, with a view to achieving inter-agency cooperation. 

The Workshop was attended by the WCO Secretariat, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the URA, the Uganda National Bureau of Standards, the National Trade Facilitation Centre, (NFTC), the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives, the Immigration Service, the Ministry of Agriculture, the National Drug Authority, and delegates from Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and the Union of the Comoros.