Africa Vehicle Import Duties & Regulations

The ECOWAS CET uses five tariff bands based on the type of good: 0% (essential/capital goods), 5% (raw materials), 10% (intermediate goods), 20% (finished consumer goods), and 35% (goods in locally-sensitive sectors). Passenger vehicles generally fall in the 20% band under the base CET.

The base CET band is not the whole story. Member states can and do layer additional national levies on top for sectors they consider sensitive — vehicles are a common target, especially in countries with a local assembly industry to protect. Nigeria is the clearest example: its total effective vehicle duty runs well above the 20% CET band once the National Automotive Council (NAC) levy is added. Other ECOWAS members apply the CET more directly, closer to the 20% band.

UEMOA (the West African Economic and Monetary Union — the eight CFA franc states within ECOWAS: Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea-Bissau, Togo, Benin) additionally shares a common currency and applies small extra community levies on top of the CET.

The EAC CET (updated 2022) uses four bands: 0%, 10%, 25%, and 35%. Passenger vehicles generally fall in the 25% band. Partner states have discretion to "stay" (deviate from) the common rate for specific categories — Kenya, for example, applies a higher rate to certain electric and hybrid vehicles while offering 0% for large buses (50+ seats).

Right-hand drive matters here too. All four EAC members drive on the left and require RHD vehicles for road registration — the CET duty structure is a separate question from the RHD/LHD compatibility question covered in each country's own guide. See our Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda guides for the RHD sourcing situation alongside the duty figures.

South Africa is a member of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) — a genuine customs union with a shared external tariff among its five members. Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique are members of the broader SADC (Southern African Development Community) free-trade area, which reduces tariffs on trade between member states but does not give them a shared external tariff on imports from outside the region — each sets its own national vehicle duty and VAT rate.

South Africa mandates RHD vehicles and applies its own national duty structure (see our South Africa guide). Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique are also RHD markets, each with independent national duty, VAT, and (for landlocked Zambia and Zimbabwe) transit arrangements through South African ports — see the Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique guides for each country's specific figures.

The Arab Maghreb Union nominally links Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya, but it has not achieved meaningful customs integration — each of these five countries, plus Egypt, runs its own national duty, VAT, and age-restriction regime for vehicle imports. All five drive on the right and are LHD-compatible with DriveSino's standard catalog, which simplifies the vehicle-configuration side even though duty rates vary considerably by country.

See our Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, and Libya guides for each country's specific rates.

Ethiopia and Cameroon are not members of the ECOWAS, EAC, or SACU/SADC groupings covered above and set their own national duty and VAT rates — see our Ethiopia and Cameroon guides. Mauritius belongs to COMESA (the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa), a larger, looser bloc than the EAC that several other African countries also belong to alongside their other memberships — COMESA has not implemented a fully binding common external tariff for vehicles, so Mauritius's actual duty structure is national, layered on top of its RHD requirement (see our Mauritius guide).