When I passed through a few Southern African border posts last year, I was disappointed to see the long queues of trucks waiting to get through customs. One truck driver I spoke to complained that the hold-ups invariably take days.
I thought to myself that it would be advantageous to persuade the powers-that-be that the value of the customs receipts pale into insignificance when compared with the time wasted. At many of the border posts, there seems to be no consciousness at all that time is money.
Moreover, no one I spoke to was aware that technology exists that allows customs duties to be paid without the need to stop at all. I’m holding thumbs that the African Continental Free Trade Area that comes into force from January will get rid of those time-wasting cross-border procedures, once and for all. If it does, it will be worth its weight in gold; if it doesn’t, it won’t be worth the paper that it’s written on.