In Abuja, Africa's continental trade body has staked $3.1 billion and twenty years on a single conviction: that digital infrastructure can accomplish what decades of political negotiation have not. The African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat has signed a concession agreement with Bergmans to modernise customs systems across the continent, replacing paper and delay with real-time data and streamlined clearance. It is, at its core, a wager that the unglamorous machinery of border administration holds the key to Africa's economic integration — and that a technology proven in Nigeria can s