Programme dossier
Led by INTERPOL, with a consortium of partners.
ENACT: Enhancing Africa's response to transnational organised crime
An analysis-led project on organised crime across Africa, on the premise that the binding constraint is evidence rather than willingness.
What it addresses
ENACT is built around a claim about why responses fail: that the scale, shape and effect of organised crime across the continent are not documented well enough for policy to be aimed at them. Its stated aim is to mitigate the impact of transnational organised crime in Africa on development, governance, security and the rule of law, and it pursues that in two directions at once — building an evidence base through criminal analysis, and building skills and capacity among the institutions that would act on it. Neither works alone: analysis with no capacity to use it produces reports, and capacity with no analysis produces activity aimed at the wrong thing.
How it works
It runs from 2017 with a budget of EUR 26 million for the consortium, funded by the European Union alongside the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the German Federal Foreign Office. INTERPOL's own role in it is to help police agencies adopt proactive strategies, improve investigations and exchange information — which is the operational half of the same argument, since intelligence that cannot cross a border is intelligence about one jurisdiction of a route that crosses several. The continental scope is what distinguishes it from the corridor projects: it is organised around a phenomenon rather than around a route.
Where it applies
ENACT is not tied to a geographic corridor. It is shared infrastructure, available to any participating jurisdiction, and its usefulness in a given place depends on what that jurisdiction contributes to it rather than on where it sits. The obligations that determine that are set out on the firearms page.
For a record system the relevant map is therefore not a route but a ratification. A jurisdiction bound by the Firearms Protocol has undertaken to mark weapons at manufacture and import and to keep the records for at least ten years; one that is not has no such obligation, and a weapon passing through it can lose its history legitimately. Of the 106 jurisdictions covered on this site, 83 are parties and 23 are not.
Not parties to the Firearms Protocol — 23
Afghanistan · Belize · Botswana · Cameroon · Chad · Colombia · Djibouti · Egypt · Equatorial Guinea · Eritrea · Gambia · Georgia · Guinea · Kosovo · Kyrgyzstan · Namibia · Niger · Pakistan · Saint Lucia · Suriname · Tajikistan · Uzbekistan · Zimbabwe
That list is the practical limit on what a shared tracing system can reconstruct. The system itself is neutral about it: it will return whatever was entered, and where no obligation to enter anything exists, an accurate query returns nothing and the absence looks identical to a clean history.
Treaty basis
In substance the work operationalises the UNTOC framework generally rather than one article of it — the convention obliges parties to criminalise participation in an organised criminal group and to cooperate across borders, and an evidence base is what makes either provision usable. The distinction matters: a programme of this kind creates no legal powers of its own. It builds the capacity of states to use powers they already hold under instruments they have ratified, which is why a jurisdiction that is not party to the relevant instrument gains less from participation than one that is. What each instrument obliges is set out on the conventions reference.
Questions
What was ENACT?
Enhancing Africa's response to transnational organised crime, led by INTERPOL, with a consortium of partners. An analysis-led project on organised crime across Africa, on the premise that the binding constraint is evidence rather than willingness. The description on this page is drawn from INTERPOL, which documents it.
What problem was ENACT designed to address?
ENACT is built around a claim about why responses fail: that the scale, shape and effect of organised crime across the continent are not documented well enough for policy to be aimed at them. Its stated aim is to mitigate the impact of transnational organised crime in Africa on development, governance, security and the rule of law, and it pursues that in two directions at once — building an evidence base through criminal analysis, and building skills and capacity among the institutions that would act on it. Neither works alone: analysis with no capacity to use it produces reports, and capacity with no analysis produces activity aimed at the wrong thing.
Which trafficking corridors does ENACT relate to?
ENACT is not organised around a geographic corridor. It is infrastructure that any jurisdiction can draw on, which is why it appears on the firearms page rather than on a route.
What is the treaty basis for this kind of work?
In substance, the UNTOC framework generally rather than one article of it — the convention obliges parties to criminalise participation in an organised criminal group and to cooperate across borders, and an evidence base is what makes either provision usable. A programme of this kind does not create legal powers; it builds the capacity to use powers a state already has under instruments it has ratified, which is why the ratification position on each jurisdiction record matters to what such a programme can achieve there.
Is ENACT still running?
This index does not assert a current operational state for any programme in it. Funding cycles turn over faster than the pages describing them, and a dossier that claimed a programme was active would be making a claim it could not keep current. INTERPOL is the place to check, and it is linked from the sources at the foot of this page.
Why does ENACT carry no corridor?
Because it is not organised around one. Its subject is the programme family rather than a route, so the geographic entry point is the 106-jurisdiction index rather than a corridor profile. The dossiers that do address corridors are listed on the programme index.
Sources
- INTERPOL — Enhancing Africa's response to transnational organised crime . Checked 2026-07-30.