Compulsory Motor Insurance in the CIMA Zone: What a Company Running a Vehicle Fleet Must Secure

Legal basis

Article 200 sets the scope of the obligation and specifies that family members of the driver or insured are treated as third parties for the purposes of the cover — an easily overlooked point when a company vehicle is used by an employee and family members are on board. Article 204 gives the cover CIMA-wide territorial reach: a policy must guarantee liability across all CIMA member states, though when a claim arises outside the state where the vehicle is registered, the guarantee is governed within the limits and conditions of the law of the state where the accident occurred. Articles 206 to 208 set out the exclusions the Code itself authorises or tolerates — notably damage to the driver personally, to goods being transported, or arising from participation in unauthorised races or competitions — while confirming that these exclusions never suspend the underlying obligation to be insured in the first place. Article 202 extends the obligation to trailers and semi-trailers, treating the addition of even a small trailer as an aggravation of risk under the general rules on risk aggravation (Articles 15 and 19).

Analysis

For a logistics operator, an agribusiness with field vehicles, a mining or construction company running a site fleet, or simply a services firm with a pool of company cars, three practical consequences follow directly from these articles. First, cover bought in one CIMA state does not automatically travel well: because a cross-border claim is settled under the law of the state where the accident happened, a fleet moving between, say, Côte d'Ivoire and a neighbouring CIMA state should confirm with its insurer, before an incident occurs, how the policy's territorial extension is documented and what certificate must be produced at the border or to a foreign claims handler. Second, the obligation attaches to the vehicle and to whoever is driving it, authorised or not (subject to the insurer's subrogation rights against an unauthorised driver under Article 200) — so a fleet policy should be checked against the realistic range of people who might end up behind the wheel, including employees outside their normal duties, rather than only the named drivers. Third, a company that also repairs, sells, or inspects vehicles as part of its business (a dealership, an equipment importer with an in-house workshop) carries the separate, cumulative obligation of Article 201, which is frequently missed by groups that treat vehicle insurance as a single line item rather than as two distinct obligations.

Recommendation

Before renewing or arranging fleet cover in the CIMA zone, an investor should ask its insurer or broker to confirm, in writing, the policy's territorial scope across the specific CIMA states where the fleet actually operates, whether the certificate d'assurance required under the Code is issued and affixed to each vehicle as required locally, and whether garage, workshop or dealership activities carried out in-house are covered under the Article 201 obligation or need a separate contract. Groups operating in more than one CIMA state should also confirm, state by state, which national implementing decrees (tariffs, minimum sums insured) apply, since the Code leaves some of that detail to each member state.