In the latest years, many regional organizations and countries in Africa have realized the potential of cross-border small-scale trade, as it represents a large and growing share of the African economy and employment force, but also a driver of economic growth in terms of job creation and poverty reduction. Accordingly, many initiatives have been launched to facilitate such sector by developing platforms that leverage on technological innovation for making products or services traded by small-scale traders accessible to larger consumer groups or markets. In some cases, such solutions also offer guidance on how to fulfil regulatory and documentary requirements needed to trade across borders, which are often characterized by opaqueness or arbitrary application by border officials. The final objective is to encourage formalization, so to allow governments to collect shares of revenue from this sector that otherwise would go lost in informal transactions not declared to the customs and tax authorities.

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The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Secretariat, and the Government of Zimbabwe, have signed a Euro 920,544.28 sub-delegation agreement to construct a cross-border market at the Chirundu border post between Zambia and Zimbabwe. Chirundu is the first functional and fully operational One Stop Border Posts (OSBPs) in Africa. Located between Zimbabwe and Zambia, the Chirundu OSBP is a great attainment in the Continent, from which many lessons have been learned in view of the implementation of similar OSBP projects in Africa.

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