Dar es Salaam, April 6, 2018: TradeMark Africa (TMA) and the Central Corridor Transit Transport Facilitation Agency (CCTTFA) have signed a financing agreement geared towards strengthening and enhancing the Central Corridor Transport Observatory (CCTO). The financing will specifically improve monitoring of the Central Corridor performance in-order to support evidence-based advocacy and decision making to remove trade barriers. To that effect, TMA will provide a total of USD 1.3m (Equivalent to approximately TZS 2.86 billion) over a 3-year period (2018 to 2021).

“TradeMark Africa is delighted to provide this support to CCTTFA because the organization is producing reliable and timely data on the performance of the Central Corridor Transport Network. This support therefore will further strengthen that work and enable the countries served by the corridor to design interventions to further improve performance of the corridor” said John Ulanga, the Tanzania Country Director.

“CCTTFA highly appreciates this funding support from TMA for our Central Corridor Observatory work, the funding will go a long way to support our ongoing efforts and enable us to work with various stakeholders in central corridor partner states to further improve efficiency of the corridor and hence increase the volume of trade going through the corridor for the benefit of the countries”. said Captain Dieudonne Dukundane, Executive Secretary of CCTTFA.

To accomplish the above, the CCTTFA will enhance the CCTO into a one stop center platform for availing and accessing relevant information and data related to movement of goods along the Corridor. Specifically, this support will enable CCTTFA maintain and improve the current online information portals, develop mobile data collection tools, roll out the central corridor dashboard to other member states, develop trade costs and transport predictive models and develop tools to monitor processes and effectiveness of initiatives along the Central Corridor.