The commercial chambers of the Courts of First Instance (TPI) and Court of Appeal now have new refurbished offices equipped with IT infrastructure with technical spaces for servers and central inverters, networking equipment, safety material and an interconnection system.

In its desire to make Togo a destination of choice for investors, the Togolese government launched on 11 August an online platform to manage trade litigations in the offices of the justice administration. This new infrastructure, estimates the minister of Justice and Relations with Public institutions, Kokouvi Pius Agbetomey (photo), "is an impressive mutation, even a real revolution" which aims to improve the business environment by reducing the timelines and processing costs of trade litigations.

"The objective is to improve the business environment by eliminating all obstacles to local and foreign investments and by promoting Africa as an attractive investments destination", said Lodonou Kuami Gaméli, magistrate, Director of the Capacity Strengthening Project for the commercial chambers of the Court of First Instance and the Court of Appeal (PRCTPICA).

The app, characterised by the introduction of a paperless system in the trade chain from the registration of the cases to the decision making step, has been paired with a real-time stenotype reporting system as well as a documents database, extended by an electronic library.

The tele-processing innovation is on three main points:

• Remote tracking of cases as well as access to every trade decisions of the tribunal and court of appeal of Lomé and those of other jurisdictions;
• Establishment of a search procedure;
• Creation of tools for online consultation.

For Alioune Sow, ICF technical assistant on this project, "the most important challenge is about the timelines. For investors and economic agents, it is vital to move fast in case of trade litigations and contracts linking them the different parties in order not to lose money. It is the speed and good quality of the decisions taken which attract a lot of investors and give them reassurance".

Thus, in this impetus of modernisation of the Togolese trade justice, 100% of archives of courts administration services are now digitised and available, the chambers have been equipped with publications on trade matters (shipping, banking, insurance, etc.).

The whole update is an investment of FCfa 1.85 billion provided by a grant from the ICF foundation (FCfa 1.15 billion) and the Togolese government (FCfa 700 million).