On 28 June 2021, the WCO participated in the closing ceremony of the 49th programme of the Belgian Customs for officials from selected French speaking African Customs administrations. This annual programme lasts 9 month and provides junior Customs managers with an opportunity to further improve their knowledge about Customs legislation, their capacity to apply Customs procedures and techniques and also to familiarize with relevant standards of the European Union and Belgian Customs.

The closing ceremony of 49th programme took place at the headquarter of Belgian Customs in Brussels and was attended by high level representatives of the Belgian Government, their Director General of Customs and managers of the National Customs Training Center (ENDB),  and distinguished invitees of the European Union, the student’s home administration and of the WCO.

In his speech, Mr. Ricardo Treviño Chapa, WCO Deputy Secretary General, congratulated the 18 participants of the programme for their performance and welcomed them in the international Customs and WCO community. At the same time, he underlined the need for African Governments and Customs administrations to invest more in Customs training and to enrich their training programmes to enable Customs to successfully assume all of their responsibilities. He also called on the participants to contribute at their level to the successful implementation reform and modernization of their home administrations and more specifically to the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement. Finally, he thanked the Belgium authorities, and more particularity the Belgium Customs ENDB for the support provided to French speaking Members on the African continent and for the fruitful collaboration with the WCO. He informed the audience about the WCO’s concrete proposal to further extend its contribution to the programme, in particular by increasing the number of work sessions facilitated by WCO experts and by adding modules on priority issues for Africa, including AfCFTA.

For more information, please contact capacitybuilding@wcoomd.org.