Interventions Reduce Bribery Along Trade Routes

USAID Agribusiness and Trade Promotion (USAID ATP) is tackling road harassment, a major challenge faced in West Africa in the transportation of agricultural products. 

The four-year project (through September 2012), designed to improve trade for agricultural growth and food security in eight West African countries, has found a way to combat corruption and inflated trade costs from extorted illegal payments along key onion, maize and livestock transport corridors.  As a result of its field-tested strategies, the project has already exceeded its goals and progress continues.

At “market shows” in major regional markets and “road shows” at rest stops, truckers and traders are coached on the required documents for transporting goods across borders and also on professional conduct.

In road coaching, a project assistant also travels with a driver and trader, getting a close-up view of road harassment, observing how the trucker and trader interact with officers, and documenting the harassment that occurs.  Road harassment reports, conducted quarterly, and various handouts such as fact sheets and copies of key road documents, are distributed.  USAID ATP staff also establish personal relations with certain key security agents in corridor countries, working with them to find a solution to the problems.  Road shows also present an opportunity for direct advocacy, when truckers/traders and public officials are brought face-to-face to express their concerns.

Monitoring reports show the strategies are effective. Based on project estimates of the numbers of trucks transporting commodities during January-March 2011 against corresponding baseline periods, truckers along all livestock trade corridors would have paid over one million dollars of bribes in the absence of our strategy; by applying our strategy, they have saved about a quarter million USD. The bribes saved by onion and maize truckers were much smaller, but the total savings will be significant over the life of the project.

“Doing business along the Kantchari—Accra corridor is now good as compared to previous times when security agents took advantage of our ignorance to collect large sums of money from us,” onion truck driver Dawara Aboubacar observed. 

“Through education, we now insist on doing the right thing, thereby paying less to the security agents. We even have the courage to resist payments suspected to be illegal.”