Under the auspices of WCO/JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) Joint Project, which was launched in July 2016 to support trade facilitation in Africa, a WCO/JICA Joint Workshop on Intelligence Analysis for Master Trainers of East Africa was held in Kampala, Uganda, from 6 to 10 February 2017.   Those Master Trainers are Customs officials and have been actively contributing to sustainable capacity building in Customs administrations in East Africa.    

During the workshop, twenty-six (26) customs officials from Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda developed training materials on Post Seizure Analysis (PSA) which reflect the enforcement challenges faced by Customs Administrations in East Africa.  Benefitting from advice from WCO and Japan Customs experts, as well as from the cooperation extended by JICA under its Project on Capacity Development for International Trade Facilitation in East Africa, participants worked intensively to review and improve the training material under development and made outstanding progress..  The development of this training material is expected to be completed at the next workshop on intelligence analysis planned in late 2017.  Once completed, the Master Trainers are going to use the materials for training of Customs officials in East Africa in order to contribute to the improvement of “intelligence-driven risk management” through better intelligence analysis.

Considering the important role that Master Trainers are playing in the Customs administrations in East Africa, the WCO expert introduced in detail the Risk Management Compendium focusing on Profiling and Targeting.  He also referred to the on-going work on the development of PSA Guidelines.  Experts from Japan Customs shared their experience and techniques in the area of PSA.   In addition, all experts contributed to the participants’ work to refine the training materials, building on both global and national perspectives.

Throughout this workshop, all participants made excellent contributions to improve the training materials while developing a deeper understanding of the WCO tools and instruments relating to intelligence analysis.  At the end of the workshop, the participants agreed to continue their efforts to further review the training materials with a view to finalize them at the next workshop in late 2017.  The JICA/WCO Joint Project is committed to supporting these continuous efforts of Customs administrations in East Africa to ensure sustainable capacity building.