Egypt’s gov’t is bringing overland freight into Nafeza for the first time — closing a gap in trade digitization

Egypt’s government is moving to bring overland freight under its digital trade window for the first time. The Finance Ministry has begun surveying road-freight companies interacting with land ports — a step toward registering them, regularizing their status, and linking them electronically to Nafeza, the national single window for foreign trade, three government officials tell EnterpriseAM. The aim is to fold truck-borne cargo into the same electronic system that governs sea and air freight, letting customs track shipments and vet the data on them before they reach the border, the sources add.

What changes at the port: The plan introduces consolidated bills of lading for land freight and requires trucking companies to submit detailed cargo information before arrival, letting customs see what's coming and prepare inspection of the electronic data rather than starting cold at the gate, the sources say.

The goal is to kill the paper: “The Finance Ministry's aim in linking land-freight companies to Nafeza is to move gradually from paper procedures and in-person interactions to a digitized documentary cycle, so that shipment data becomes part of an electronic database that can be reviewed, tracked, and tied to inspection and release,” the sources tell us.

Where it lands first, and why: The changes will first target Red Sea ports such as Nuweiba and Safaga, the sources say. Gulf tensions have driven more trucking traffic onto alternative export routes including the land-sea trade route between Nuweiba and Jordan’s Aqaba, which continues into Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait. Safaga is being expanded to absorb traffic growth and prevent backlogs, with digitized procedures and a Nafeza link expected to cut how long trucks wait for inspection and paperwork, the sources add.

IN CONTEXT- Egypt's Red Sea ports are carrying a bigger share of the country's Gulf trade as shippers increasingly use land-sea routes to move cargo into Saudi Arabia and beyond. Freight demand on the Safaga-Duba corridor had surged 25%-30% back in March above normal levels as shippers sought alternatives around Hormuz and Bab Al Mandab. Traffic on the Nuweiba-Aqaba route had climbed back in March too — up from the usual 60-70 trucks to as many as 100 refrigerated containers on busier days.

How does the data get to the truck?

Most of Egypt's trucking market is not built around integrated digital systems. Around 90% of the country's fleet is individually owned, Reliance Operations & Maintenance Services Managing Director Omar Ragheb tells EnterpriseAM. This creates constraints around efficiency, compliance and economies of scale.

The truck is last to know: In a typical import, the importer and clearance broker execute nearly every one of the dozen-plus steps between pre-registration on Nafeza and the delivery order, while the truck is simply told when to show up, Trella Co-Founder and COO Ali El Atrash tells EnterpriseAM. The carrier therefore depends on information it does not control, which El Atrash says means “a mandate that lands on the truck asks the weakest link to submit information it doesn't have.”

For carriers, documentation is as important as the movement itself: Trella works with more than 45k drivers, and El Atrash says “the single biggest source of delay in our [Trella's] ports business isn't driving, it's documentation arriving late or wrong.”

For the bigger operators, the system is less of a leap: Companies such as Reliance already have the digital infrastructure to plug into Nafeza, with Ragheb saying its in-house fleet management system (FMS) can be integrated with the platform. Nafeza is also designed as a single window for the approval process, rather than a collection of separate portals.

What changes before the truck arrives?

Egypt already has the basic machinery for pre-arrival processing: Advance cargo information became mandatory at seaports in October 2021 and on air freight from January 2026. Nafeza now has more than 30k registered importers and around 80k foreign exporters filing information before cargo moves.

Road freight would put that information further downstream: “Today the truck arrives and then the process starts. Pre-arrival flips that — the process starts, and then the truck arrives,” El Atrash says.

That gives customs and companies time they do not have at the gate: Customs can assess incoming cargo earlier, while companies can see what is required and prepare for clearance before the truck reaches the border, customs operations specialist Mahmoud Basal tells us. Having shipment information available in advance gives authorities more scope for earlier assessment while giving companies better visibility over their shipments and the expected clearance process, he notes.

The same principle is already being extended across borders: The TIR system, which went live in July, extends a similar principle across borders through a single electronic document, guarantee and seal check at the crossing rather than repeated inspections. The International Road Transport Union estimates TIR can cut border time by up to 92% and transport costs by up to half, while Investment Minister Hassan El Khatib has cited a 25%-40% reduction in road transport costs for Egypt.

The system needs to talk back: If pre-arrival submission tells the carrier what's been accepted, what's outstanding and who has to act, it changes the dispatch decision. If it doesn't, El Atrash says, “it's just earlier waiting.”

That uncertainty is the cost the trucking market feels most directly: A truck sitting at a gate is not earning, while a delayed shipment can mean a night in a yard or an empty return leg. For owner-operators in particular, the difference between knowing a shipment will be ready and guessing when it will be ready determines whether the next job can be scheduled. “The paperwork is manageable. Not knowing when the cargo will actually be ready is the problem,” El Atrash adds.

How much can faster customs actually fix?

Egypt's own numbers show that digitization and wider customs reform can materially reduce clearance times: The Customs Authority's time-release study (pdf) put average release at Alexandria at 16.1 days in 2021, falling to 8.6 days in 2024 — a 46% drop. Investment Minister Hassan El Khatib said last month that the national average is now around 5.8 days, against a two-day target.

But the next problem is what happens to the cargo once the paperwork is cleared: Physical inspections covered 74% of consignments in the 2024 study, down from 93%. “Three in four containers still get opened,” El Atrash says.

Where advance data becomes useful: The information allows authorities to assess risk before the cargo arrives and direct inspectors toward the shipments that need greater scrutiny. El Atrash says the next gain is “using the advance data to send inspectors to the risky quarter and let the rest move.”

The remaining delays are harder to digitize: Inspection capacity, the number of agencies able to hold a shipment, payment procedures and port working hours can all keep cargo waiting after its information is already in the system, El Atrash says.

The move toward dry ports could address some of those physical constraints. The 6th of October dry port and the facility under construction at 10th of Ramadan could shift parts of the clearance process away from the seaport and closer to inland logistics activity, reducing the extent to which trucks depend on procedures taking place at the port gate.

Where the digital chain still breaks

The digital process still has gaps: “The main thing that can still cause delays is the manual submission of the customs clearance documents to the shipping line’s agency after customs clearance,” Ahmed Elshuqairi, senior export operations specialist at Martico Egypt tells EnterpriseAM.

The bottleneck simply moves downstream: Congestion at the port or an agency's fixed window for receiving documents can make that physical submission difficult, Elshuqair says. Moving the step electronically would make the process easier and faster.

Road freight has an even longer chain to connect: Cargo data needs to move from importer to broker to carrier in a standard digital format rather than “as a photo on WhatsApp,” El Atrash says. Government agencies also need to connect their systems to Nafeza and remove duplication, while port gate systems are being digitized separately by different operators and truck permits sit in another Transport Ministry system.

The responsibility for the data also has to follow the data itself: Liability for a wrong declaration should sit with whoever created the information rather than the driver carrying the shipment, El Atrash adds.

The digital chain is only as strong as its last handoff

The ministry's survey is the first step: The plan is to register road-freight companies and link them electronically to Nafeza, bringing truck-borne cargo into the same electronic customs framework used for sea and air freight. The next step is making sure the information generated by that system can be used across the shipment process — from customs assessment to the truck at the gate.

The government’s ambition is broader than replacing paper with a digital form: “The step won’t stop at digitizing a paper or a document — it aims to build an integrated data chain for the overland shipment, from the moment the bill of lading is drawn up until it enters the land port, is inspected, and released,” the sources say.

The bottomline: What matters is whether the truck can be planned around the clearance process. The carrier needs to know when the cargo will actually be ready, rather than being told when to show up. That is the difference between a truck moving through the system and a truck waiting for it.