BORDERLESS

West Africa has the most expensive, least efficient road transport

network in the world. Poor and overloaded infrastructure coupled with a culture of rampant corruption; truck drivers looking for illegal short-cuts and enforcement agencies looking to make a quick buck.

The net results are bottlenecks, delays and unpredictable taxes in the form of bribes; all leading to high direct and indirect transport and

product costs throughout a region that relies heavily on imports.

USAID’s West African Trade Hub (WATH) is working on alleviating these inefficiencies through an initiative named Improved Road Transport Governance (IRTG). They asked for our help in creating a master brand to house all the initiative’s activities; a brand that could speak to government and opinion leaders just as easily as it could speak to the enforcement agent and the truck driver on the front lines; a brand that could raise awareness of the costs of these endemic inefficiencies

that have come to be culturally accepted as “normal”.

Inspired by their passion and by our own experiences with these inefficiencies, we took the project on pro-bono and envisioned a Borderless West Africa; one in which trade flows without impediments.

BORDERLESS

The Borderless brand has been enthusiastically adopted by private and public sector organizations across West Africa.

“Bribes and delays have only declined since”. (West African Trade Hub Annual Report #3 / Transport Infrastructure / October 2009 -

“The Borderless launch in Cotonou reached hundreds of millions of people on international radio”, and the brand’s adoption by Civil Society Organizations elevated awareness even further - reaching an estimated 43 million people

BORDERLESS

This elevated awareness has galvanized the region’s governments into action:

In Burkina Faso, all fixed police checkpoints have been removed, and security agencies are reviewing their strategy to address road corruption issues.

In Mali, all the Direction of Transport agents have been removed from the checkpoints by the Minister of Transport. Drivers told officials at a road show that

In Togo, two checkpoints have been removed from the Lome-Ouagadougou corridor. The Minister of Security has pledged to remove more.

In Senegal, the gendarmerie introduced a global positioning system (GPS) to track all trucks using Senegalese sub-corridors. The Prime Minister has issued a decree to reduce the number of controls from 25 to 3. Gendarmerie, police and customs established a toll free number where drivers could complain.

In Ghana, the national security service has issued a probe into customs activities at the borders and on the corridors. Metro Television and Ghana Television - which, combined, reach almost half of all Ghanaians - are conducting and running stories and documentaries on corruption at the borders.

And in August 2010, the Government of Ghana launched the “Truck Drivers Guide to Ghana”; an in-depth guide that helps truck drivers understand all the

And boldly emblazoned across the front cover of that official Government of Ghana document? Borderless.