Boosting trade, e-commerce and low emissions freight in developing countries is the aim of a new 30 million euro (NZ$52.9m) investment between logistics giant Deutsche Post DHL and German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
The initiative was driven by the COVID-19 crisis which has hurt trade relations in developing countries and put an additional 115 million people into poverty this year alone, according to World Bank research.
An agreement was signed by German federal minister Gerd Müller and Deutsche Post DHL chief executive Frank Appel to invest over the next five years with a focus on Africa including Morocco, Rwanda, Kenya, Ghana and the Ivory Coast.
This will help digitise customs and trade through the use of technology such as cashless payment via smartphone. The partnership will also boost projects on green hydrogen and synthetic fuels.
“The corona crisis and the lockdown have disrupted supply chains in developing countries. Millions of companies are fighting for survival,” Müller says.
“Right now we have to keep economic cycles going. But bureaucratic customs procedures and corruption are hampering intra-African trade.
“With a new digital system, we are helping medium-sized African companies to handle customs completely digitally.
“We are also creating new sales markets worldwide via new e-commerce platforms. All this accelerates trade, creates transparency and enables enormous leaps in development.
“We place particular emphasis on training and the promotion of women as entrepreneurs. And we are deliberately focusing on digitisation. Nowhere is digitisation progressing faster than in Africa. Some African countries are already further ahead than Europe – for example, in cashless payment via smartphone,” Müller says.
“Right now we have to keep global economic cycles running and ensure that the poor also benefit from it. Digitalisation can make a big difference here. Many of our partner countries are already more advanced in digitisation than we are in Germany – for example, when it comes to mobile payment.”
Deutsche Post DHL chief executive Frank Appel says many regions face major hurdles when it comes to cross border trade.
“Together with the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development we are working decisively on removing those hurdles.
“Merchants who previously sold their goods regionally get access to customers around the world. For this purpose we also started our new sustainability programme GoTrade. The programme engages especially in developing countries which have not yet benefited from globalisation as much as others,” Appel says.
The programme uses DHL’s logistics expertise to help small and medium-sized companies with cross-border trade.
In cooperation with public sector partners, such as national governments and multinational organisations, it also initiates projects that help speed up customs clearance, reduce delays at borders and generally reduce the costs of cross-border trade.
