About Nohena
The authority already judges your declaration. We let you see it first.
Nohena is pre-lodgement trade compliance AI for African imports, built for the people who carry the risk.
Why we exist
Customs reads every declaration with automated valuation and risk tooling. The agent finds out there is a problem only when the PAAR query and the demurrage clock arrive. The pain is not the scrutiny. The pain is the surprise.
The asymmetry
One side of the desk has foresight. The other has a spreadsheet.
The authority side now evaluates every import declaration with automated valuation and risk systems. The licensed agent works from experience, a duty calculator and a spreadsheet, and usually learns there is a problem only at the PAAR: a value uplift, a reclassification, a query, and days of demurrage that were avoidable.
That gap is structural. Suppliers and platforms change, but the asymmetry does not. It is the single most expensive thing about clearing goods in a market like Nigeria, and it is invisible until it is too late to fix.
The answer
Nohena gives the agent the same foresight, before lodgement.
Nohena reads the trade documents you already have and evaluates the declaration the way a customs risk engine will. It classifies every line to its ten digit tariff code with the rule that backs it, builds the customs value with its lawful Article 8 additions, checks that value against the reference band the authority will use, gates permits and prohibitions, and computes landed cost. Every output carries a rationale, a citation and a confidence. No naked verdicts.
The assessment arrives while the declaration can still be corrected. Where a query is likely, Nohena shows exactly where, so it can be fixed or substantiated first. Same enterprise-grade capability, in the agent's hands, one step before customs.
The villain
The asymmetry
The surprise query you could not see coming, and the demurrage that follows it.
The hero
Foresight
The same judgement the authority's systems make, in the agent's hands, before the file is lodged.
The action
Get it right first
Not get away with it. A correct, defensible declaration reduces queries and supports correct revenue.
Where we sit
Nohena prepares. You lodge.
Nohena inserts at two points in the clearance chain and stops there. It reads the file at Form M readiness and again once the PAAR is issued, so what you lodge matches what customs will accept. It does not connect to a government platform and it does not move cargo. A bot driving the customs system on your login would put your licence at risk, so we do not build one.
Where Nohena sits in the Nigerian import chain
Nohena spans steps 1 to 5. The licensed agent lodges on the customs system.
The liability stance
Decision support with a defensible audit trail.
Nohena does not remove the importer's or the agent's legal responsibility for classification and customs value. It is decision support, not a decision. Every recommendation is explainable and every step is recorded to an append-only, tamper-evident trail, so a declaration can always be re-explained against the rules that applied on its date. Trade documents carry commercial and personal data, so every organisation is isolated at the database row, model providers operate under no-training terms, and what leaves the system is minimised and redacted under the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023.
Who builds it
Customs domain expertise, paired with AI engineering.
Nohena is built by Techsense Developers, from Lagos, Nigeria. We pair working knowledge of Nigerian import clearance with the machine-learning engineering the problem needs, because a compliance product is only as defensible as its data and its domain.
We are working hand in hand with licensed clearing agents and the trade associations that represent them, so the engine is shaped by the people who lodge, on real consignments, in the real ports. We are live for the Nigerian market today and built to extend across ECOWAS and the wider AfCFTA area, with the regional tariff and rules of origin already in place.