26 countries sign Accra Convention to boost trade facilitation, digitalisation

On October 26, 2026, in Accra, 26 countries signed the United Nations Convention on Negotiable Cargo Documents, commonly referred to as the Accra Convention. This significant event aims to enhance international trade, enhance access to trade finance, and promote digitalisation. Ghana, led by President John Dramani Mahama and Trade Minister Elizabeth Ofosu-Adjare, became the inaugural signatory to the Convention.

The Accra Convention establishes a unified legal framework for negotiable cargo documents related to road, rail, air, and sea transport. This harmonized approach addresses the long-standing issue of limited access to financing for businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), who use goods in transit as collateral. Currently, maritime cargo documents allow for goods to be traded during transit and secured for bank financing, but no such arrangements exist for goods transported by road, rail, and air.

Ofosu-Adjare stated that only 80 to 90 percent of Africa's freight moves by road, while intra-African trade accounted for just 14.4 percent of the continent's total trade in 2024. Additionally, Africa's estimated trade finance gap in 2024 ranged between US$74 billion and US$92 billion. The Accra Convention could potentially alleviate some of the barriers hindering access to finance.

A key provision of the Convention is that negotiable cargo documents will function as documents of title across various transport modes. Furthermore, the Convention offers protections for parties that rely on these documents in good faith and ensures that electronic cargo documents possess the same legal effect as their paper counterparts.

The Minister emphasized Ghana's dedication to ratifying the Convention and revising pertinent laws concerning transport, the sale of goods, evidence, electronic transactions, and secured lending to facilitate its implementation.