For a customs authority that has spent recent years quietly rebuilding its systems and reputation, the invitation carries unmistakable weight. Sierra Leone’s National Revenue Authority has been selected to host the 32nd Conference of Directors General of Customs for the West and Central Africa Region of the World Customs Organization a gathering that will bring the continent’s senior customs leadership to Freetown’s Bintumani Hotel in May 2026, and in doing so, signal that the NRA has arrived at a different standing within the region.
The conference, convened under the auspices of the WCO’s West and Central Africa Directorate, will draw Directors General of Customs, technical experts, development partners, and private sector actors from across the region. Its theme A Customs That Protects Society Through Its Vigilance and Commitment frames the agenda around a tension that defines modern customs administration everywhere: how to keep borders secure without strangling the trade flows that economies depend on.
The programme is structured to produce outcomes rather than declarations. Pre-conference sessions open on 4th May with a Private Sector Group meeting, followed by the Regional Experts Committee from 5th to 6th May. These preparatory sessions are designed to inject technical substance into the main conference proceedings, ensuring that when Directors General sit down to review past resolutions and agree on new policy directions, the groundwork has already been laid by the people who manage implementation day to day.
The substantive agenda will cover digital transformation and smart customs systems increasingly the dividing line between customs authorities that facilitate trade efficiently and those that become bottlenecks as well as compliance reform and coordinated action against illicit trade. Both the WCO-WCA Secretariat and the Regional Capacity Building Office are directly involved in the conference’s organisation, a collaboration the NRA describes as deliberate and aimed at maximising impact.
That Freetown secured the hosting rights at all is a measure of how the Authority’s trajectory has been read at the regional level. The NRA’s Commissioner General, Mrs. Jeneba J. Bangura, has presided over a period of institutional reform that observers credit with improving transparency, strengthening internal systems, and repositioning the Authority in regional customs circles. Her leadership, steady and strategic in the characterisation of those who work within the organisation, is widely regarded as central to the credibility that made Sierra Leone a plausible and ultimately successful candidate to host an event of this scale.
The logistics reflect the conference’s ambitions. Each participating country will send both its Director General and a technical expert a format designed to ensure that the discussions do not remain at the level of policy aspiration but are grounded in the operational realities that technical staff manage on the ground. All sessions will be held at the Freetown International Conference Centre at Bintumani Hotel, Aberdeen.
For the NRA, the hosting of this conference is not merely a logistical achievement. It is a marker in a longer reform story one that began with institutional dysfunction and has moved, through sustained effort, toward a point where the region’s customs community looks at Freetown and sees an authority worth convening around.
Whether the momentum generated in Aberdeen translates into deeper regional cooperation on illicit trade, harmonised digital systems, and more efficient border management across West and Central Africa will be tested in the months that follow. For now, preparations are firm, partners are engaged, and Sierra Leone is ready to open its doors to the region.
