26 countries signed in Accra to untangle the paperwork that starves small traders of credit

A trader whose goods are on a truck or a train often cannot borrow against them, because the paperwork proving ownership does not travel cleanly across borders — one reason Africa faces a $92 billion trade finance gap. In Accra, 26 countries signed the new UN Convention on Negotiable Cargo Documents, a shared legal framework developed by UNCITRAL that lets cargo documents represent goods in transit and pass between parties the same way, wherever they are. Ghana's Trade Minister Elizabeth Ofosu-Adjare said Ghana would move to ratify and would pilot the documents with its shippers' authority, ports, customs and banks. The convention, named for the city where it opened for signature, takes effect after the tenth country ratifies — a paperwork fix aimed squarely at helping smaller traders get the working capital their goods already represent.

SDG 8 · Decent work and economic growth — Mechanism: policy reform