Customs System through the Cloud: Trans-Kalahari Corridor (TKC)

The Trans-Kalahari Corridor is a paved highway corridor that provides a direct route from Walvis Bay and Windhoek in central Namibia, through Botswana, to Johannesburg and Pretoria in Gauteng province in South Africa. The corridor also includes railway lines from Walvis Bay as far as Gobabis in Namibia, and from Johannesburg as far as Lobatse in Botswana. It was officially opened in 1998.

Last year (2011) at the World Customs Organization IT conference in Seattle (USA), Microsoft announces the launch of a pilot "cloud computing" project based on Azure technologies between Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. A pilot programme to link the ASYCUDA systems of Namibia and Botswana via Microsoft’s Cloud Computing technology. Both Microsoft and USAID are partners in this initiative seeking to enable the two customs systems to communicate with each other through a secure portal.

This year (2012) at the World Customs Organization IT conference in Tallinn (Estonia),
progresses about this pilot cloud computing solution have been shown at Microsoft's booth.

Also, FTW Online recently published an update on recent developments occurring along the Trans-Kalahari Corridor. It suggests that customs systems throughout the SADC region could soon be talking to each other through the Internet, if the pilot project between Namibia and Botswana is successful.