TradeMark Africa hands over Busia, Uganda One Stop Border Post Facility. Operations start. • 2017-08-14

Busia, Uganda, June 9th 2016: Travellers to Africa’s busiest border, Busia, will now enjoy improved service, lesser transit time at the border following the completion and hand over of Busia-Uganda One Stop Border Post. OSBP’s afford lesser formalities for goods and persons crossing borders. By reducing border transit time by up to 30%, Busia OSBP especially addresses needs of Uganda, a land locked country, which suffers high transit costs for traded goods, which have to be transported by road to the ports located either in Kenya or Tanzania.

TradeMark Africa (TMA), which was undertaking the construction and operationalisation of the OSBP, handed over the building mid this week to the Uganda Ministry of Works and Transport.

A final inspection established that all the buildings, roads and parking areas, whose works were undertaken under the original contract are technically ready for use. The facility also includes scanners shed, targeting booths, warehouse and canopies.

All the Uganda border agencies including immigration, customs and police, have already relocated into their respective offices in the OSBP. Kenyan Customs officials are already working on the Uganda side of the border and the One Stop Controls for cargo are already in place. Immigration officials from both Uganda and Kenya will exchange staff before end of the week. This will result to improved efficiency of customs and other government agencies by avoiding unnecessary duplication of clearance procedures. By sitting under one roof, Uganda and Kenyan officials will increase cooperation, sharing of information and trade data.

This development makes Busia one of TradeMark Africa (TMA) first OSBP where completion of physical infrastructure occurs at the same time as the operationalisation of the border post.

TMA has invested approximately US$6m in the construction of the Busia – Uganda OSBP and an additional US$1.2Million for purchase of computers and software required to operationalise.

An OSBP is a “one stop” form of border crossing point jointly managed by neighbouring countries and where activities are streamlined to maximise efficiency. In this case, travellers will stop only once at the country of destination, where their travel or other documents will be stamped both exit (from country of origin official) and entry (by country of destination official) at the same time. The officials will be seated next to each other, thus the “One Stop”.

TMA is funded by a range of development agencies including: the government of Belgium through the Belgium Development Cooperation; Canadian Government through Global Affairs, Canada; Danish Government through the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA). Others are Finnish Government, Dutch Government, Swedish Government through the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA); UK government through the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the United States of America Government through the United States Agency for International Department (USAID).

Source: Trade Mark Africa