Shared problem
A hot coastal port, a long climb, cold inland depots, and more than one agency on the road.
Fuel custody for any port-to-inland corridor
What was loaded at the port is what arrives inland.
Landlocked countries lose litres between the sea and the depot. Heat, cold and diversion look the same on paper. Oiltrackers keeps one record for each tanker. Ethiopia’s Djibouti–Addis road is the case study. The same model fits other corridors.
The model
One custody system. Any corridor with the same fight.
Fuel expands in heat and shrinks in cold. Diversion hides in that gap. Ports, borders and depots each keep a slice of the file. Oiltrackers writes the load once, removes the weather, and stops the truck at the depot if the litres still do not match. Officers can look. They cannot rewrite the record.
Same rules
No load without a record. Weather is taken out before anyone calls a loss theft. Gates cannot change the result.
Local names
The road, the agencies and the language change. Ethiopia shows the full path. Another country plugs in its own gates.
Case study · Ethiopia
Doraleh to Addis: one record
This is the working example: 910 kilometres from the port at Doraleh, through Galafi, up to Addis Ababa. Heat expands the fuel. Cold shrinks it. The fuel is the same. Only the litre number changes. Weather is taken out first.
12:00
Road clock · East Africa time
Fine
Needs a look
Extra litres
Stopped
The coloured line shows how hot the road is
The problem, on this corridor
Fuel leaves Djibouti. Ethiopia cannot always say where it all went.
The cartoon below is the Ethiopia case, not a one-country product. Heat makes fuel take more space. Cold makes it take less. That is weather. Other missing litres are taken off the truck. On this road, and on roads like it, nobody can tell the two apart until one record follows the tanker.
How it is solved
Write it once. Take out the weather. Let the system finish.
Every step runs by itself. If the litres still do not match after weather is taken out, the truck is stopped at the depot and an alert is sent. Officers can read the alert. They cannot let the truck go. They cannot change the bill for the missing fuel. They cannot fine the driver on their own.
How it works
What happens to one tanker
The steps are the same on every corridor. The place names below are the Ethiopia case: Doraleh, Galafi, Semera, Awash, Adama, Addis. Four steps. Two endings. Officers get a message. They do not decide.
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01
The truck is recorded at Doraleh
Plate, driver, company, fuel type, litres, heat and seals must be written down before any fuel is loaded. No record, no fuel. No record, no border crossing at Galafi.
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02
We take out the weather
Heat makes fuel expand, so the metre reads more litres. Cold makes the same fuel shrink, so the number falls. Nothing left the tank. That 1.5 to 2 percent drop is removed first, so weather is not called theft.
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03
Every gate checks the same record
At Galafi, Semera, Awash and Adama the truck is scanned and photographed. If the phone network dies in Afar, the device keeps the checks and sends them later. No one at the gate can change the result.
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04
Addis checks the same litres
The depot compares what arrived with what left Djibouti, after the weather is taken out. If it matches, the record closes. If it does not, the truck is stopped at the depot and an alert is sent. An officer can read the alert. An officer cannot let the truck go. An officer cannot change the bill for the missing fuel.
It matches: the record closes
The fuel arrived. No fine. No meeting.
It does not match: the truck is stopped at the depot
The proof is already on the record. Officers get an alert so they can look. They cannot let the truck go. They cannot change the bill for the missing fuel.
Other regions
Same challenge. Different road.
These corridors share a hot port, a long inland haul and several agencies on one load. Ethiopia is the case study we can walk through. The others are ready to use the same custody model with their own gates, languages and institutions.
Case study · the road we walk
Doraleh, Galafi, Addis Ababa
910 km on the Galafi road. One record across Customs, Transport and Finance. Heat and cold are written out before anyone argues the litres.
Same problem, drawn where the roads actually run
Northern Corridor: Mombasa, Nairobi, Malaba, Kampala, then Gatuna into Kigali. Port heat, queues, depot shortfalls.
Central Corridor and the Tanzam road: Dar es Salaam to Rusumo, Kigali, Bujumbura and the east of the DRC, and south through Nakonde to Lusaka. Long dwell. The argument starts after the truck has moved.
Gulf to the Sahel
Four ports, three landlocked capitals
Abidjan and Tema and Lomé into Ouagadougou. Abidjan on to Bamako. Cotonou to Niamey. Weather changes the litre count before anyone calls it theft.
Southern corridors
Beira, Durban, Walvis Bay
Beira through Harare to Lusaka. Durban through Beitbridge. Walvis Bay across to Gaborone, and north into Zambia. Several borders. No single clock from rack to depot.
A new region
Your port, your gates, your depot
One record. Weather written out first. Officers alerted. No rewrite of the bill.
Who uses it
Ministries that already pay for the fuel and the border.
In Ethiopia that means Finance, Transport, Customs, the petroleum enterprise, and Digital Ethiopia — with telebirr, Fayda and CBE Birr already in the civic stack. Another country maps the same seats to its own institutions.
- Finance
- Transport and logistics
- Customs
- National fuel supplier
- Digital government
- National payments and identity