On Friday, August 23, 2019, the General Directorate of Customs of Burkina Faso signed a memorandum of understanding with the customs of Niger and Togo. This memorandum of understanding materializes the entry into force of the Interconnected System for the Management of Goods in Transit (SIGMAT) between the three countries. It was the Directors General of Customs of the three countries who signed the convention.

In the presence of the director general of customs of Niger, Amadou Petitot, and the commissioner of customs and indirect rights of Togo, Essien Kwawo, the director general of customs of Burkina, Adama Sawadogo, chaired, on Friday August 23, 2019, the ceremony signature of agreement and the framework instruction relating to the interconnection of the computer systems of the customs administrations of Burkina, Togo and Niger.
As a prelude to this signing of an agreement between the three customs administrations, a meeting of experts for the interconnection of the computer systems of the three customs administrations was held in Ouagadougou, from August 20 to 22, 2019.

This meeting made it possible to review and validate the draft framework instruction on procedures for computerized road transit between the three States and transit routes; to take stock of the network connections, configurations and difficulties and to proceed with the examination and adoption of the composition of the national technical committees in charge of the monitoring and evaluation of the interconnection and the roadmap of the actions to be implemented for the effectiveness of the interconnection.
This meeting of experts, according to the Director General of Customs of Burkina, Adama Sawadogo, was held within the framework of the Interconnected System for the Management of Goods in Transit (SIGMAT) launched on March 22, 2019. The regional plan for the deployment of this solution to now manage regional transit was validated the same day in Abidjan, by the ECOWAS Customs Directors General.
“Our experts reached a consensus on the memorandum of understanding that should govern the interconnection of computer systems and also proposed to our decision a framework instruction organizing the procedures for computerized transit,” he specifies. He says that to be comprehensive, the experts identified the different transit routes between the three countries and proposed a schedule for the general deployment of SIGMAT by October 1, 2019 at the latest.
Speaking, the Director General of Niger Customs, Amadou Petitot, first requested a minute of silence for the victims of the recent tragic events that have hit the host country. In the rest of his remarks, he invited customs officers to be vigilant at the level of controls because, he said, "the other forces are also counting on us in the fight against organized crime and violent extremism". He finally invited everyone to be patriotic because, for him, the mobilization of the revenue that the States request from them also serves as a guarantee with donors.

For the commissioner of customs and indirect rights of Togo, Essien Kwawo, the interconnection will facilitate time savings and the fight against fraud and false declarations. It is an innovation that is intended to be advantageous, to which other countries of the sub-region are invited to join.

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