The first question every foreign buyer asks about an African supplier is whether the company exists. It is the right question, and it is not the hardest one. Companies that exist can still fail to deliver, and the checks that matter go further than a registration number.
Here is what can be verified from outside, what cannot, and the patterns that recur often enough to be recognised.
What a registration number proves
Every company operating legally in the region has a registration in the Registre du commerce et du crédit mobilier — the RCCM — which is the commercial register created by the OHADA Uniform Act on general commercial law, applied identically across seventeen member states in West and Central Africa. A company in Dakar, Abidjan, Bamako or Libreville is registered under the same legal framework.
In Senegal, a company also holds a NINEA, its tax identification number.
What these numbers prove: that a legal entity was constituted, when, under what form, and who the declared directors are.
What they do not prove: that the company has any activity, any stock, any production capacity, or any intention of shipping you anything. A registration costs very little to obtain. Treat it as a floor, not as a verification.
OHADA maintains a regional register portal, and several member states operate national business-registration portals. A company that cannot give you its RCCM number, or gives one that does not resolve, has answered your question. A company that gives a valid one has cleared the first hurdle only.
The checks that actually mean something
An export licence or professional accreditation where the commodity requires one. Several agricultural export sectors are regulated, with sector regulators maintaining lists of licensed exporters — the cashew and cocoa sectors in Côte d'Ivoire being the obvious example. Ask which regulator, and check the list.
Bank references. A supplier who has handled export volume has a bank that will confirm a relationship. One who proposes payment to a personal account, or to an account in a third country in a different name, has told you something decisive.
Trade references you actually call. Not testimonials on a website. Names, companies, telephone numbers — and a call. Ask one question: did the goods ship on time and at contract quality?
Physical capacity. For a producer, the processing facility. For a trader, the warehouse. Photographs prove nothing — reverse image search regularly finds them on three other websites. What proves something is a video call from the site, unannounced, where you ask to see the yard, or a visit.
Consistency. The company name on the pro forma, on the bank details, on the registration and on the export licence should be the same name. When they differ, ask why before you ask anything else.
The recurring fraud patterns
These repeat because they work.
The advance payment that vanishes. A polished website, a WhatsApp number, competitive pricing, a request for thirty percent up front. The money leaves and nothing follows. This is the single most common loss, and it is entirely avoidable by not paying in advance to a counterparty you have not verified.
Borrowed photographs and borrowed documents. Images of another exporter's warehouse, a scanned licence belonging to a real company. Reverse image search takes thirty seconds. Verifying a licence with the issuing regulator takes an email.
The false inspector. You require independent pre-shipment inspection, the supplier proposes an inspector, and the report is favourable. Appoint the inspection company yourself, from among established international bodies, and pay them directly.
Bank detail interception. Email correspondence is compromised and new payment instructions arrive, plausibly worded, shortly before a transfer. Any change to payment details is confirmed by voice on a number you already held — never on a number contained in the email that announced the change.
Documents released before payment. An original bill of lading is a document of title. Sent to a buyer before payment, it hands over the goods. This is why the documentary credit mechanism exists.
What cannot be done from a desk
Someone has to go.
Every check above narrows the risk. None of them establishes that four hundred tonnes of sesame are in a warehouse in Bamako, at the quality declared, belonging to the person offering them. That requires a physical visit — the yard, the stock, the processing line, the people.
This is why serious commodity trade in the region is not conducted at arm's length. Either the buyer travels, or a party with standing on the ground does it for them.
Where the risk actually sits
Note what fraud in this trade almost never is: a fake shipping company or a fake customs administration. It is a supplier relationship that was never verified.
Which suggests the structural answer. If the counterparty risk is what stops the transaction, remove the counterparty. In a purchase where a single intermediary buys the goods, inspects them, ships them and delivers them under one contract, the buyer has one party to assess instead of a chain.
That is what we do when we buy on a client's behalf rather than simply moving goods. We identify the supplier, check the registration and the licence, visit the site when the volume justifies it, appoint an independent inspection body ourselves, and deliver DDP. You assess us, once, instead of assessing a new supplier for every purchase.
We are a Senegalese company: GRACECORP AMD GROUP SAS, NINEA 009713274, RCCM SN DKR 2022 B 31511, registered in Dakar. Those numbers are on every page of this site and on every invoice we issue, for exactly the reason set out above — you should be able to check us before you talk to us.
Sources
- OHADA — Uniform Act on General Commercial Law, which establishes the RCCM across the seventeen member states.
- ECOWAS Trade Information System — regulatory and tariff information.
- International Chamber of Commerce — UCP 600, the rules governing documentary credits, and the reason original documents are not released before payment.
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